Let the Finder Beware

L'Envoi

2007-11-13T06:39:00.001-06:00

Three years ago today, more or less by accident, I started blogging. Wednesday before last it struck me, within a brief span of hours, that I am through with blogging. I thought I'd wait a week or two and see if the prescript reversed itself; but it hasn't.

Several factors came together into alignment. Main factor is, it's getting harder and harder for me to find anything new and fresh to blog about. In my very first blog post I expressed reservations about eventually running out of things to say and falling into repetition. So. After five years in the blogosphere, three years blogging, and 951 blog posts, I reckon it's time to hang it up.

In the often uncivilized Wild West of blogdom, I've been unusually blessed in the caliber of readers and commenters my blog has attracted. Good, decent, intelligent, civil people, every one of you. I want to thank you for making these past three years worth all the effort. It really has been a joy.

Thanks to my commenters, regular or occasional. Thanks to Ben, Lucy, Trey, Jay & Deb, Richmond, Bill, Sam & Jeremy. Thanks to Dean, Mark, Casey, Fran, Travis, McGehee. Thanks to David in Madison. Thanks to Richard. Thanks to David in Japan.

Thanks to my lurkers, and that means first and foremost thanks to Refugee from Houston, who's been with me from the very beginning. Thanks to my brother Steven. Thanks to Greg in Madison, and John in Las Vegas. Thanks to Eunice and Val and Norlin.

Thanks to those lurkers, regular or occasional, whom I've come to recognize in my stats, even if I can't put a name to them: Netscape 4 ("OS Unknown") from Dublin; Opera 9 from Zionsville, Indiana; Firefox for Linux from San Jose; Cleveland, and Boulder, and Seattle, and Tampa Bay, and Phoenix, and Arlington Virginia, and Springfield Illinois, and Hillsdale Michigan, and Vancouver BC; those two cohorts from Emeryville California and Dublin Ireland; and Konqueror from Paris, and Google Reader from Berlin, and Feedchecker from Japan; and Cambridge and Nottingham in the UK.

Once upon a time, about 45 years ago, a young grade school boy was leading an intolerable existence. There were school bullies. The boy also was radically undersocialized, which didn't help. As a matter of survival the boy turned within, and drew the cadmium control rods out of the reactor core of his imagination. He underwent a radioactive core meltdown of the imagination. A meltdown that spilt through the doors of perception, spilt over on several fronts into something rather akin to synaesthesia, spilt over into an entire constructed language of his own. And that radioactive imagination has never really let up since.

Poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that perception and conception can be bound together, the gap between them mediated, only through the tertium aliquid of imagination. I know what he meant. I've been living it in spades, for most of my 51 years. And I think I fathom it somewhat more deeply after blogging it these past three years. Hope you've enjoyed being along for the ride.

One Last Post as I Head Out the Door...

2007-11-13T06:36:00.000-06:00

Okay, long as I'm on my way out of here, I'm posting one final piece I've just got to get out of my system. It's about a board game I've been working on for over 30 years now.

And if I had the energy, I might write up a short story that's been rattling around in my head for much of the life of this blog. "On the Banks of the Oneota" is set right here in northeast Iowa, only a few miles from my home. It takes place in an alternate history where long ago the Civil War fragmented the United States, and the white man lost his hold on the interior of North America. Imagine a world where it's 2008, Ioway nation has returned, has returned, has returned, HAS RETURNED, HAS RETURNED... and the braves of Ioway are rallying for war with Missourah!

Eh, maybe it'll turn up one of these days over on my personal website.

But believe me, there's a lot less like that left in my head than you might imagine. If it were otherwise, I wouldn't be bowing out of blogging.

The Quintuple Arcana

2007-11-13T06:34:00.000-06:00

Fig. 1 The Quintuple Arcana

Given my lifelong fascination with games, it should come as no surprise that I've made up a number of games of my own. I've got one game, in fact, that I've been working on for over 30 years, and I'm not finished with it yet.

It's called the Quintuple Arcana— in my own Hermetic language, Mna Jondir-Pantho Zinisa. The Quintuple Arcana is one of the chief board games played by my Hermetic people, though the game was originally created by an alien race called the Esloniki, in the science-fictional future history I was writing back in my teens. I've got to be careful here— in my mind, much of the terminology for the game is in Hermetic. Will try to render it into English as I go.

The Quintuple Arcana is a game for two players, played with tiles which are entered and moved around on the board. Each player tries to move so as to form certain melds, or combinations, with his tiles. It's sort of like playing Pinochle, or Mah Jongg, only it's a board game. Some melds enable capture of an opposing tile (think Nine Men's Morris). Some melds score points. Some melds hedge in or block the opponent. Some melds open up transitions to new states or levels of the game.

And then there's all the extra, incredibly intricate rules and exceptions to rules. The rules of the Quintuple Arcana are so mind-bogglingly complex, they make Chess seem like Tic-Tac-Toe; though after a while you can see how the rules all have a certain "feel" to them.

I started working on the Quintuple Arcana at age 18. At first it was just vague wisps drifting across the back of my mind, like colored tissue paper wafting on the breeze. Bits and pieces and dimly-beheld snatches of the way this game of games ought to be. I had to get into just the right meditative frame of mind, into a state of flow; and even then I couldn't force it, the game just came to me, a detail here, an exception to the rule there. I must've been doing something right: after a while magic squares and other mathematical surplusage began dropping out of the rule structure unbidden.

Fig. 2 The Quintuple Arcana Board

The board for the Quintuple Arcana is made of yellow leather, marked in green and black and red. In the middle of the board is a cross-hatched area, called the Confluence (think Chinese Chess). The two players are known as Red and White, and each player stays on his own side of the Confluence.

Each player has eighteen points on which to play and move his tiles: fifteen points of intersection, a three-by-five grid known as the Quinquedecade; plus three other points known as Stations, one in each corner and one off to the right-hand side.

The points of the Quinquedecade fall into five metals and three colors. The metals, starting from each player's left hand and moving across to the right: quicksilver, silver, copper, gold, and iron. The colors, starting closest to the player and moving up toward the Confluence: green, blue, and red. Silver and gold are the stronger metals, and red is a very strong color. A meld formed on red is very powerful, but also more vulnerable. The specially marked point on gold at blue is also known as the stone point: associated with it are certain privileges and restrictions of move.

Note how Red's quicksilver is located right across from White's iron, and Red's silver right across from White's gold. Red's copper and White's copper stand across from each other, which leads to special rules for when one player already has a certain tile on copper, and the other player tries to move an identical or similar tile to copper.

The two corner stations, indicated by large circles, are known as the yellow stations. Tiles moved to the yellow stations tend to alter rules and rankings across the board. The color of these stations is yellow, the metal of these stations is wood. For purposes of tile movement, these stations are not considered as being diagonally behind the Quinquedecade, but rather as the color behind green, or the metal next beyond quicksilver or iron.

The station to the right of the Quinquedecade is represented by an old Eslonikese syllabic sign, and is known even in Hermetic by its old Eslonikese name of the cra, that is, the mode, or the state of being. The cra is invested with certain powerful immunities, and tiles in this station extend some of those immunities across the board.

Fig. 3 The Quintuple Arcana Tiles

Each player has two dozen wooden tiles, black enamel with red felt on the underside. The tiles are divided into three categories: number tiles, suit tiles, and odd tiles.

A player has two each of number tiles from one through five. One is a green eagle bearing a crozier and a thunderbolt. Two is two crescent moons, to Hermetics the twin moons which govern the rainfall. Three is three beams of sunlight shining through the clouds. Four is an Esloniki working a ritual, holding a torch over a basin of water between the two pillars of the four elements. Five is five heptalphas or seven-pointed stars.

The suit tiles fall into three suits, urns, suns, and lightning. Each suit has four ranks, suit signs (low), volcanos or firesprings, dragons, and comets (high). In the suit of suns, the phoenix replaces the dragon. And in the rank of suit signs, the suit itself becomes the rank. Under special conditions, the rank of suit signs can "pivot" to become a fourth suit, the suit of heptalphas or seven-pointed stars.

The names of the twelve suit tiles, in English, are urn comet, sun comet, lightning comet; urn dragon, sun phoenix, lightning dragon; urn firespring, sun firespring, lightning firespring; burning urn, rising sun, thunder sword.

The two odd tiles are the tower and the eclipse. These are used to alter the legal moves of other tiles aligned with them on the board, the tower extending the moves of one's own tiles, the eclipse blocking one's opponent's tiles.

The rank of the tiles, as well as the tiles constituting a meld, can shift radically according to the "conditionalization" of the board, influenced chiefly by tiles in the yellow stations. For example, in (default) five-hexatonic mode, a meld known as the major sequence consists of the three number tiles five, four, three, arranged in any order in a straight line on any three adjacent points of the Quinquedecade. But in three-hexatonic mode, the major sequence consists of the number tiles three, five, two; and in four-heptatonic mode, the major sequence is four, one, three.

Fig. 4 The Quintuple Arcana— A Scoring Position

The game begins with the board empty. Red and White alternate turns, and in each turn a player may either enter, or move, or remove, or reenter one of his tiles. As the tiles build up and shift on the board, each player strives to form melds, gaining advantage for himself, or imposing disadvantages on his opponent. Play may appear to be blocked; then changing to a different mode opens up a whole new set of possible moves and melds.

In the position shown above, White scores by moving a four from the cra to iron at blue. This gives White three melds: a secondary sequence (sun phoenix, sun firespring, rising sun), vertical on quicksilver; a pair of fives, vertical on copper at green and blue; and a major sequence (four, five, two), horizontal on blue, according to the four-hexatonic mode induced by the urn comet in the yellow station.

The secondary sequence and the pair together meet the "configuration readiness" precondition for White to score by closing the major sequence with the move from the cra: advais cvadro viro sajoro, "moves four to iron at blue." White's score for his position is as follows: basic score for major sequence, 20 points; score for pair united with major sequence, 4 points; score for closing meld from a station, 2 grace; score for purity of tile (quinquedecade has only number tiles plus one suit), 20 points. No doubles means a multiplier of one, 44 points times 1 plus 2 grace equals 46 points total. Note 46 points worth of scoring bars awarded to White at bottom of board, above.

Whew! Like I say, I've been working on this game for over 30 years, and I'm not there yet. I've got a notebook densely filled with over 70 pages of rules, add in another 20 pages I've got in loose leaf and we'd be getting close to the complete rules on first level. But then the game goes to second level, and third, and... I'll never get there. I'll never get it finished. Meanwhile, on the lid of the scoring-bar box, there's me, my dog, and a Camel from outer space, watching two Esloniki playing the Quintuple Arcana, in that land where the sun is eternally rising in the west...

Iridicide

2007-10-31T07:00:00.003-05:00

Cook a rainbow, and see what you've got left.

Halloween Candy

2007-10-31T07:00:00.001-05:00

I've got Halloween candy. In fact I picked up two more bags when I was down in Lansing yesterday afternoon. Just hoping I'll have enough for this evening, enough for my two Confirmation classes plus any stray trick-or-treaters. I find I'm eating the stuff almost as fast as I can lay it in stock.

Secret Menu Items

2007-10-29T06:26:00.000-05:00

Now, here's something I never knew before. Many restaurants and fast food joints have secret menu items. Items not listed on the menu, but you can order them, and they have their own entry to be rung up on the cash register.

At Wendy's you can order a Grand Slam, which "would otherwise be called a Classic Quadruple, were it on the menu." Jamba Juice "has an entire secret menu of 'unhealthy' smoothies named after things that would involve copyright violations were they to be included on the menu," including White Gummi Bear, Fruity Pebbles, Skittles, and many, many more. As for Dairy Queen, "there is a huge book every DQ has to have, you want it, it's in there. It may not be listed as a item, but the instruction on how to make it and what to use are in there as well as how it is rung up."

All this and much more here.

Fry Pan

2007-10-26T07:58:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to think when it was that I first saw a frying pan referred to as a "fry pan." Because they are, you know, frying pans. "Fry pan" has an oddly unidiomatic sound to it, as if coined by a non-native speaker of English. Yet in recent years I often see these common kitchen items referred to as fry pans.

Then there's swimming suits, which are, you know, swimming suits. Only in recent years I often hear them called "swim suits." What in the world is a swim suit, and why should we call it a swim suit instead of a swimming suit?

The only comparison I can think of is the Superman costume I had when I was a kid. That was long before the days of idiot lawsuits, and yet the Superman costume had this idiot warning along the bottom hem of the shirt: "WARNING! This costume will not enable you to fly. Only Superman can fly."

Yeah, right, in 1965 I can hardly think of a kid so stupid, or a lawyer so avaricious, as to think that jumping off the roof of the shed in your Superman costume is going to lead to anything other than a nasty mishap. Of course nowadays the lawyers would be lining up to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of every kid who's ever even dreamed of wearing a Superman costume, "Hey, lawsuit this! The costume didn't have a warning label on it, so how were these kids supposed to know that the costume didn't enable them to fly?"

Result, a judgment for umpteen billion dollars against DC Comics, every costume manufacturer in the country, plus McDonald's, the tobacco companies, and the builder of that shed, all thrown in for good measure. From now on all costumes will come with 40 or 50 large warning tags attached, "Don't lawsuit us!"

Somehow in my paranoia I suspect there's a similar story behind the emergence of terms like "fry pan" and "swim suit." Somewhere in this benighted land there was a dim bulb who thought that a frying pan must naturally be a pan which will fry food placed in it, all on its own and unaided, with or without benefit of a functioning stove to supply heat. Or that a swimming suit will somehow enable you to swim and not sink, irregardless of whether you actually know how to swim or not.

On discovering that a frying pan sans stove will not fry food all by itself... on learning that a swimming suit of itself will not enable you to remain afloat if you don't know how to swim... the inevitable lawsuits were filed, and in due time won, with vast fines extracted from the hapless manufacturers of swimming suits and frying pans.

This led to a change in name. Now it's fry pan: "WARNING! This pan by itself, without a stove, will not fry food." And it's swim suit: "WARNING! This suit by itself will not enable you to swim. Only people who know how to swim can swim." And if you can't obey the warning label, and the lawyerly-altered new names of the products, hey, don't lawsuit us!

Look around and you'll find many examples of this bizarre and unidiomatic trend in renaming common, everyday items. It's no longer jogging suit, but jog suit: "WARNING! This suit will not enable you to run without effort, like some damn bionic exoskeleton. Some running effort required."

And now instead of ironing board, it's iron board: "WARNING! This board will not iron clothing by itself unattended. Human operator and clothes iron required, not included. Caution, iron can be HOT! Not to be used except under adult supervision, do not use while asleep."

And then there are paring knives, nowadays known as pare knives: "WARNING! This knife will not cut fruit, vegetables, or other items unaided. Requires a human user to make it cut things, CAUTION! Knife is sharp! Improper use can lead to serious injury or death!!!"

Google around, you'll find search results for carve knife, teethe ring, run shoes, and even roll pin. You know, instead of carving knife, teething ring, running shoes, and rolling pin. All in the interest of "Don't lawsuit us! These items will not perform, magically and unaided, without a human operator!" Yes, whoever heard of it? Oh, the emotional trauma! Include a warning label! These shoes will not make you run without effort on your part to put one foot in front of the other.

The Cat: Sequel

2007-10-25T07:21:00.001-05:00

Well, it turns out that the cat belongs to a neighbor. How it managed to wander two miles up the road I don't know. The neighbor says he thinks maybe the cat hitched a ride on his pickup and got off here. At any rate, the cat is now back home with two little girls who were missing their kitty.

I dunno, for the most part I'm relieved to be relieved of the cat. I mean, I love animals. I love dogs and cats— actually I'm more of a dog person than a cat person. But I realized long ago that, living alone and with a schedule like mine, I just wouldn't be able to take proper care of an animal.

Still, if an animal were dropped in my lap, I'd probably feel a lifelong responsibility to take care of it and look after it, no matter what. By temperament I'm just not a person who can take that kind of a responsibility lightly, or lay the responsibility aside once I've assumed it. That's part of what was so disconcerting about this cat, I could see the situation was rapidly burgeoning in the direction of lifelong responsibility no matter what. After all these years that I've been telling myself, you can't take proper care of a pet, you're not in a situation to take proper care of a pet, you wouldn't be able to do it right, don't even think of it...

Nonetheless, it was a very nice cat. And tempting. Yesterday I was sitting with the cat out in the sun, and the cat would climb up in my lap and settle down in the crook of my elbow. Then after a while the cat would climb up on my shoulders, and settle down and take a nap in the sun while draped across the back of my neck. A very nice cat.

However... the bottom line is, living alone and with a schedule like mine, I just wouldn't be able to take proper care of an animal. One of my ongoing minor nightmares is the prospect of someone "surprising" me by giving me a dog or a cat. I don't know what I would do, and I hope nobody ever puts me on the spot by giving me an animal. Like I say, given my situation I just couldn't take proper care of a pet. Nonetheless, if the responsibility were dumped on me, I doubt I could in good conscience lay it aside. Though I'd be kicking myself all the way, for years to come. Or I'd have to give the animal away immediately, and then I'd be kicking myself for years to come over that...

I don't take these matters lightly. Not when it comes to the likes of a dog or a cat. Best the matter be resolved by serendipity and circumstance, as happened this time around. And here's hoping there ain't no next time. I don't know if I could deal with it.

The New Cat

2007-10-24T07:51:00.000-05:00

Looks like I've been adopted by a cat. Yesterday morning I stepped out the front door, and this young little orange and white cat came quickly padding up to me, rubbing against my pants leg. I scratched its ears and it started purring. It arched its back and I scratched its back. Then the cat rolled over on its back and lay there at my feet.

All day long, every time I set foot outdoors this cat would materialize out of nowhere and come padding up to me. It kept following me everywhere I went, after a while learning not to get tangled up in my feet. The cat wanted to follow me indoors, though I managed to draw the line there, except for once or twice when the cat did manage to slip inside the garage and I had to shoo it out again.

The cat was such a beggar, and so tiny and scrawny, that it persuaded me at last to bring out some tuna salad, which the cat hungrily ate up. I also brought out some milk in a plastic yogurt cup and the cat lapped it up with its tongue. Well, okay, I admit that when I went grocery shopping yesterday, I did pick up some cat food. The cat seems to like the salmon with crab meat just fine. It eats the food, then it comes up to me and wants me to scratch its ears.

I don't know if this cat is going to hang around here. But if it does, I suppose I'd better feed it. Only it had better stay outside. Until the colder weather, when I suppose I could rig up for it in the garage some sort of an insulated cat shelter.

*Sigh* As you can tell, this is a losing battle. The cat has already won.

Books and More Books

2007-10-23T07:14:00.002-05:00

I've been over visiting my folks in Wisconsin. My Dad is weeding out his books, so I came back with four grocery bags full of books. The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. Dwight Eisenhower's memoirs of World War II. Charles de Gaulle's memoirs of World War II. A biography of the Emperor Constantine. Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. And a whole stack of Doctor Doolittle books...

Now the only question is, where to put all these books. I need to get another bookcase for them really. Though then the question is, where would the bookcase go in a house already full of bookcases?

Oh well, 3000 books in this house already, another several dozen isn't going to do me in.

Overheard on the Radio This Morning

2007-10-23T07:14:00.001-05:00

"...and Iowa State is coming off their best loss in years..."

Chess

2007-10-19T08:23:00.000-05:00

Most of my young adult years, age 18 to 35, I spent in academia living under the poverty of student life. Ramen noodles. Ragged blue jeans. At one point I neither had nor could afford a bed, and so for a year I slept on a rubber mat on the floor. Once I finally bailed out into the real world, I was astonished to discover that I could actually purchase non-necessities. You know, more than just an ascetic budget of food, clothing, and shelter. I started buying items I called my gear. First piece of gear I ever bought, back in 1993, was a Swiss Army knife which I still have and use. Second item was my old Hudson's Bay point blanket. And my third piece of gear was a Chess set.

I've always been a fanatic about games. I got a big, solid wood chessboard, 21" on a side. I got ebony and boxwood chessmen, Staunton, lead weighted, leather pads underneath. That aweful Platonic light that burns at the heart of all games burns especially hard and bright from within the game of Chess. To see into Chess is to see deeply into a transcendent mystery. I wanted a Chess set that said all this eloquently. Chess set, Chess set, burning bright, in the forests of the night...

Chess and I go back a long way together. I learned the moves of the pieces at age three, enough to play a rough Chess game, more or less. I learned the finer details at age nine— castling queenside, capturing a pawn en passant, 50-move draw rule, etc.— to be honest, I was a little disappointed that there weren't more such irregular rules, I had imagined an endless cloud of little exceptions and irregularities. I played Chess whenever I could. For some reason I preferred to play black. My favorite chessman was the Knight.

In high school we organized a Chess Club, with Mr. Hansen as our advisor. We attended one Chess tournament, then the principal told us the school couldn't afford the gas money for the van. Hunh, I was on the cross-country team, which took the van to every away meet, and gas was no problem. We planned to hold a school Chess tournament, wondered if we could get a Chess trophy to be engraved and placed in one of the three huge ceiling-to-floor glass trophy cases in the lobby of the high school. The principal said a trophy would cost too much, never mind that they spent twice as much on the uniform of a single football player. We scheduled a meeting of the Chess club in the business room during homeroom, then after the regular announcements that morning the principal came on the intercom to announce that the meeting of the Chess club was canceled. He did this on his own say-so, since (if you hadn't figured it by now) he hated Chess and thought that pursuits of the mind were stupid.

There was a lot of petty anti-intellectualism like that in the culture back in those days; they called our high school the "Sports Academy," anything but sports could go hang.

But then Chess has often been something of a countercultural pursuit, hasn't it? Longhaired players in coffeehouses. Crazy Paul Morphy. Crazy Wilhelm Steinitz. Crazy Akiba Rubinstein. Crazy Bobby Fischer. Chess as a pursuit that absorbs all your energies and renders you unfit for any other serious pursuit in life. Alice, the Red Queen, Through the Looking Glass.

At one point there, late teens and early twenties, I was beginning to get middling good at Chess. Knew what I was up to when I made a move, not just a pawnpusher. I was even learning various chess openings, Ruy Lopez, Giuoco Piano, King's Gambit, Sicilian Defense, Caro-Kann, King's Indian Defense, Queen's Gambit. But I let it go, I could see that the only way to get really good at it was to let it become an endless sinkhole for my energy.

Chess is one of the deepest games ever devised. Only the Game of Go has a reasonable claim to be deeper, though the Game of Shogi or Japanese Chess also comes close.

If Chess has a shortcoming, in my eyes it's precisely that, in order to play well in today's world, you need to memorize an encyclopedic load of openings. A game like this should be more amenable to strategic analysis than to rote memorization. Plus, well, computers have made massive inroads into Chess, haven't they? I'm one of those reactionaries who, in the rivalry between Man and Machine, still root for Man. But it's a losing battle. In the end the Machine will win.

Still there's nothing quite like Chess. It's a beauty of a game, a piece of Platonic archetype trapped and imprisoned in board and boxwood and ebony, like a fly caught in amber.

The Republic of New Netherland

2007-10-17T00:43:00.000-05:00

Fig. 1 Map of the Republic of New Netherland

Once upon a time in an alternate history, the Dutch did not lose their North American colony to the English. On today's East Coast, between New England and the rest of the United States, stands the Republic of New Netherland. Or, as its own citizens call it in Dutch, de Republik van Nieuw-Nederland.

This is yet another fruit of my "radioactive core meltdown of the imagination." Actually I started working on New Netherland late, going into my mid 20s. I continued to work on it for ten years or more. Can't claim I've worked on it much since the early 1990s.

But talk about detail! I've got a list of every radio station in New Netherland, location, frequency, call letters, daytime and nighttime transmitter power. All the major highways, all the railroads. The 1980 census. The major league baseball teams of New Netherland's Knickerbocker League. A detailed history of the country. Reminiscences of the best (and worst) spots to smuggle goods in across the border from the United States. For New Netherland, you know, is a country unto itself.

Fig. 2 Flag of the Republic of New Netherland

To this day, hanging on the wall, I've got an actual full-sized flag of the Republic of New Netherland. Orange and white and blue, the old flag of the Prince of Orange, with a rising sun emblazoned on the middle stripe. I even composed the tune of New Netherland's national anthem, Onze Patrie (Our Fatherland): I've been known to astound friends by whistling it clear through from beginning to end.

The history of New Netherland begins, as in our timeline, with Henry Hudson exploring on behalf of the Netherlands, sailing up the Hudson River as far as the site of the present day Fort Orange [Albany]. The Dutch West India Company made a settlement in 1624, and in 1626 New Amsterdam was founded on Manhattan Island.

My alternate history diverges from our timeline in 1638, when David Pietersen de Vries (and not Willem Kieft) was appointed Director-General of New Netherland. As one history book puts it:

[In choosing] de Vries for the post... the States-General at a single stroke almost certainly prevented the Dutch colony in North America from eventually slipping out of their grasp...

De Vries had been a merchant skipper before coming to New Netherland. He was by all accounts a remarkable personality: shrewd, clear-headed, conciliatory but firm. De Vries was humane but unyielding in pressing forward to his goals... De Vries' first measure was to press for ending the fur trade monopoly of the Dutch West India Company. At the same time, he launched an intensive and successful campaign in Europe to draw a greater number of settlers to New Netherland. De Vries saw that the Dutch colony in the New World, if it was to survive, must become a true colony, and not just a station for a trading company.

De Vries established good relations with the Five Nations of the Iroquois. He fostered a degree of self-government in the colony with the setting up of the College of Twelve, which was the forerunner of today's New Netherlander Parliament. He pressed for the Connecticut River [Varsche Kill] as the boundary between New Netherland and the English colonies in New England, and he annexed the Swedish colony of New Sweden, along the Delaware River [South River, Zuid Kill] as the Dutch colony of New Amstel.

Most importantly, when the English sent four frigates in 1664 to take the chief colonial city of New Amsterdam:

They found a well-fortified city of eight thousand souls; de Vries had ordered the city prepared for the defense. In the ensuing battle, Dutch cannon sunk two of the English frigates, and the remaining two fled amidst fearsome volleys from the shore. The English attempt to seize the Dutch colonies in America had failed.

The English were eventually to recognize the Dutch title to New Netherland. De Vries was succeeded on his death by Hendrik Watervliet as Director-General. It was Watervliet who concluded an accord with his personal friend, William Penn, to establish the city of Philadelphia as a city under Dutch sovereignty with free trade rights to and from Pennsylvania through Philadelphia. Watervliet also oversaw the organization of the two provinces of Hudson and the Catskills in the valley of the Hudson River [North River, Noort Kill], where Dutch patroons with their land-grant feudal manors had been vying with one another for influence and power.

The Dutch remained neutral during the American Revolution. But New Netherland found itself on the path to independence when Napoleon Bonaparte seized the Netherlands in 1795. Director-General Philip Schuyler assumed administrative control of the Dutch colonies in the New World. A convention was gathered in New Amsterdam, and in 1798 the Constitution of the independent Republic of New Netherland was proclaimed.

Schuyler became the first Prime Minister of New Netherland, though he soon stepped down due to ill health. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by the patroon Stephen van Rensselaer. The first party divisions emerged, between the Conservatives ("Long Pipes") and Liberals ("Short Pipes").

The great New Netherlander statesman of the 19th century was Maarten van Buren, who became Prime Minister in 1820, and held the post for most of the next 36 years. This was the era when the Erie Canal was constructed, which for a time made New Netherland a major power in commercial transport to and from the interior of North America. This was also the era of the Anti-Rent War (1841-46), which ended in the patroons being stripped of their feudal manorial powers and reduced to a mere titled nobility.

Anti-slavery sentiment fueled New Netherlander aid to the Union in the Civil War, especially after Schuyler Colfax became Prime Minister (1863-77).

Theodore Roosevelt served as Prime Minister for most of the period 1897-1919, and New Netherland entered World War I in 1917 on the side of the Allies.

With the stock market crash in 1929, the Conservative government of Vermonter Calvin Coolidge resigned by the spring of 1930, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt headed up a Liberal government until his death in 1945. This was the period of the Great Depression and World War II, which New Netherland entered in 1940. FDR is also remembered for the constitutional crisis of 1935, when he extended the term of his government, and postponed national elections, one year beyond the constitutionally mandated five-year limit.

In 1948 Quentin Roosevelt, son of TR, became Prime Minister and led a Conservative government which continued until his death in 1965. It was the 1960s: three governments fell in the next 18 months, followed by the government of the first Iroquois Prime Minister of New Netherland, Oren Lyons (1967-74), under whom New Netherland broke with the US and by 1968 withdrew its forces from Vietnam. The tempestuous Lyons era was brought to an end in late 1974, when the President of New Netherland, a purely ceremonial appointive post, forced a constitutional crisis by asserting authority to unilaterally dissolve Parliament and call for elections.

Liberal Prime Minister D. Patrick Moynihan found his own party split between moderates and radicals, and he was forced to form a coalition "Neo-Conservative" government of Conservatives and moderate Liberals. In 1983 Jack Kemp became Conservative Prime Minister. The current Prime Minister of New Netherland is Rudy Giuliani.

The Government: The Parliament [Landdag] of New Netherland is comprised of two houses, the lower House of Burghers and the upper House of Peers. In practice, virtually all legislative power is vested in the House of Burghers. This lower house consists of 120 burghers, popularly elected, and apportioned among the provinces proportional to their populations as determined in a decennial census. The House of Peers consists of 40 patroons, five Iroquois chiefs, about 50 hereditary peers, about 150 life peers, one steward of the freeport, seven chancellors, and such other members as the House of Peers may itself admit (such as the President of New Netherland, the ambassador to the League of Nations, etc.).

The Prime Minister may choose his cabinet either from within or from without the Parliament, including such cabinet posts as the Koopman (secretary and parliamentarian of the cabinet), the Schout-Legal, the Schout-Fiscal, etc.

Political Parties: The two largest parties in New Netherland are the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. Other parties which usually capture at least a few seats in Parliament are the Labor Party, the Socialist Party, and the right-wing Independent Progressive Party. The Communist Party reliably polls a number of votes, but has not held any seats in Parliament since the 1930s.

The Provinces: New Netherland is divided into 13 provinces, one city (New Amsterdam), and one freeport (Philadelphia).

The Law: New Netherland derives its legal heritage from Dutch law, based on Roman law, with some influences and admixtures from the English common law adopted by osmosis from the surrounding United States. The highest appellate court in most cases is the Chancellory, whose seven chancellors are nonvoting members of the House of Peers. The powers of the Chancellory do not extend to judicial review of legislation, and in some legal matters (the Maritime courts, the Freeport, Iroquois affairs) there are other courts which function as court of highest appeal.

Languages: According to the 1980 census, Dutch was the first language of about 85% of the population of New Netherland; English, of about 9%; Iroquois languages (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca), about 6%; and French, about 0.1%. This does not include the complicated linguistic situation of the Antilles, with Papiamento, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.

Areas which are majority English-speaking include the cities of Philadelphia, New Haven, and Hartford, and also eastern Vermont and the east end of Long Island. Iroquois languages are spoken in the Iroquois province and also among the several hundred thousand Mohawks in New Amsterdam. There are important English-speaking minorities in New Amsterdam and in Buffalo, and a sprinkling of English speakers in many other cities of New Netherland.

The spoken Dutch in New Netherland has diverged somewhat from the Dutch of the Netherlands, but the two are still more or less mutually intelligible. Up through World War I, European Dutch was employed in New Netherland as the literary language. But today the literary language in New Netherland is based much more closely on the spoken language.

Radio: Far out into the American heartland, radio stations from New Netherland can be received at night: D2CO 880 New Amsterdam, D2CA 1210 Philadelphia, D2R 710 New Amsterdam, D2Y 810 Schaeneckstede, D2WH 1180 Irondequoit; to say nothing of the several shortwave stations from New Netherland; and also two longwave stations, D2YZ 216 New Amsterdam and D2G 252 Buffalo, which date back to FDR's public works projects in the 1930s.

The national radio network in New Netherland is NNRK [Nieuw-Nederlander Radiotelephonische Koorpershaft], and in the 1950s the government organized a second "cultural" radio network; but there are also many private and commercial radio stations. The national television network is the Orange Network, which for many years was presided over by the benign authoritarian figure of Colonel Cornelius ten Broek, World War II hero of the old New Netherland Signal Corps.

Military: New Netherland has an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, and also the Iroquois Native Guard (who make the US Marines look like pantywaists).

Intelligence: The intelligence agency of New Netherland is Bluelight [Blauwlicht]. Not to be compared to the FBI, CIA, or NSA. More like the Mossad. Quick, efficient, direct, and sometimes not too heedful of niceties.

Baseball: In the world of New Netherland, all major league baseball teams are located no further west than the Mississippi, and not much further south than the Mason-Dixon line. In addition to the US and its National League and American League, New Netherland has eight major league baseball teams in the Knickerbocker League: the New Amsterdam Knickerbockers, the Breuckelen Dodgers, the Bergen Nine, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Buffalo Bisons, the Irondequoit Skylarks, the Onondaga Iroquois, and the Hartford Yellow Sox.

Gasoline: Everywhere you go in New Netherland, it's Blue & White gas. Blauw en Wit— de gasolijn, die Nieuw-Nederland gaan laat! ("Blue & White— the gasoline that makes New Netherland go!") And probably that gas goes into your Selden economy sedan, Van Buren luxury car, or Herkul truck, all manufactured by the Selden Automotive Corporation in Irondequoit, Genesee.

United States: Still has 50 states, with the addition of Plymouth, Franklin, Lincoln, and Puerto Rico. American culture in the world of New Netherland has been centered much more in mid-sized cities such as Boston, Baltimore, etc. American Presidents in this alternate history include Henry Clay (1837-1845), Lewis Cass (1849-1857), Samuel Tilden (1877-1881), Philander Knox (1901-1909), Charles Hughes (1923-1929), and the Progressive Robert M. La Follette, Jr. (1933-1953).

And that's only scratching the surface. I have tons and tons of material on the Republic of New Netherland, up through the early 1990s. All set in a world where the Dutch never lost their North American settlements to the English...

Name: The Republic of New Netherland (Dutch: de Republik van Nieuw-Nederland).

Area: 71,288 square miles.

Population: (1980 census) 31,267,971.

Capital: New Amsterdam (Nieuw-Amsterdam).

Largest Cities: New Amsterdam (7,071,030); Philadelphia (1,688,210); Buffalo (357,870).

Languages: Dutch, 84.8%; English, 8.8%; Iroquois (Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca), 6.3%; French, 0.1%. Also a scattering of Spanish, Papiamento, and Portuguese in the Antilles.

Head of State: Eduard van Rensselaer, Patroon van Rensselaerwyck, President of New Netherland.

Head of Government: Rudy Giuliani, Prime Minister of New Netherland (Conservative).

Legislature: Parliament (Landdag): lower House of Burghers, 120 elected members; upper House of Peers, made up of appointed and hereditary members.

Currency: Guilder (fl.); fl.1 = US 27¢. 1 Guilder = 20 Stivers = 100 Cents.

Administrative Units: 13 provinces, 1 city, 1 freeport. All populations are 1980 census:

Adirondacks (Adirondacken), pop. 625,845; area, 15,299 sq. mi.; cap., Plattsburgh; seats in parliament, 2.
Antilles (Antillen), pop. 246,500; area, 385 sq. mi.; cap., Willemstad; seats in parliament, 1.
Bergen, pop. 5,377,134; area, 3,381 sq. mi.; cap., Amboy; seats in parliament, 20.
Catskills (Kaatskillen), pop. 399,890; area, 5,869 sq. mi.; cap., Wiltwyck; seats in parliament, 2.
Delaware (Zwaanendael), pop. 595,225; area, 1,982 sq. mi.; cap., New Amstel (Nieuw-Amstel); seats in parliament, 2.
Erie, pop. 1,475,195; area, 4,005 sq. mi.; cap., Buffalo; seats in parliament, 6.
Genesee, pop. 1,320,161; area, 6,407 sq. mi.; cap., Irondequoit; seats in parliament, 5.
Hudson, pop. 2,562,486; area, 5,765 sq. mi.; cap., Fort Orange (Fort-Oranje); seats in parliament, 10.
Iroquois, pop. 1,496,868; area, 9,004 sq. mi.; cap., Onondaga; seats in parliament, 6.
Nassau (Nassouwen), pop. 2,603,813; area, 1,218 sq. mi.; cap., Heemstede; seats in parliament, 10.
New Amsterdam, City of (Stad van Nieuw-Amsterdam), pop. 7,071,030; area, 300 sq. mi.; cap., New Amsterdam; seats in parliament, 26.
New Haven (Nieuw-Haven), pop. 2,788,395; area, 4,716 sq. mi.; cap., New Haven (Nieuw-Haven); seats in parliament, 11.
Orange (Oranje), pop. 1,987,689; area, 4,087 sq. mi.; cap., Fort Nassau (Fort-Nassouwen); seats in parliament, 8.
Philadelphia, Freeport of (Vrijport van Philadelphie), pop. 2,243,217; area, 320 sq. mi.; cap., Philadelphia; seats in parliament, 9.
Vermont, pop. 474,523; area, 8,486 sq. mi.; cap., Burlington; seats in parliament, 2.

Kether

2007-10-16T06:58:00.002-05:00

And when you call me "Godthåb"— for "Greenland"— both to be drawn out long and low, as if an electronic voice through a loudspeaker— it is as if you were to call me "crown of the head"— in place of my proper given name— both to be spoken in that electric loudspeaker voice— as if expecting me to react just because it is in the same tone of voice as the sound of my name...

Homer Never Nodded Like This

2007-10-16T06:58:00.001-05:00

They were having some Sunday afternoon readings at the bookstore, with a painfully earnest audience, necks craned diagonally, sitting in plastic-and-tube-metal chairs, while earnestly painful speakers declaimed their way through short story and poem, like your high school forensics meet. I would have been glad not to be there. No doubt these people, English majors and public radio pledgers all, fondly imagine they are recreating some scene from around a Bronze Age campfire, "Listen to the storyteller!" I got news for you, baby: Homer was never like this. Homer was never leadfooted. Homer was never dull.

Overheard in a Hospital Waiting Room

2007-10-16T06:56:00.000-05:00

"...and then she flew to Kansas City, and she ended up dancing all night..."

Losing Weight

2007-10-15T06:56:00.001-05:00

Well. I seem to be losing weight. I steadfastly refuse to keep a set of scales in the house. But at the beginning of this year, my belt was on the second notch. Now my belt is on the fourth notch, and even that is becoming loose.

People who know me out here in meatspace would find it hard to believe that, up into my mid-twenties, I was fairly thin. With some minor ups and downs. But as late as age 25 I weighed 140 pounds, same as when I graduated from high school.

Then slow steady gain. By age 31— 1987— when I moved from Illinois to North Carolina, I was brushing 200 for the first time. Living the poverty of student life in North Carolina brought that way back down again: a diet of rice, dried beans, potatoes, oatmeal, and ramen noodles will do that. I returned to the Midwest several years later somewhere near average weight.

Until late '92 and early '93, when I spent six weeks lodging in a bed and breakfast (long story). Rich food for breakfast every morning, my weight shot way back up again. Didn't succeed in shedding the excess pounds until around 1997, when physical activity working in wholesale sports merchandise did the trick.

Then, life in Iowa, eat as you please, little exercise, I really don't want to think how I've packed on the pounds since the turn of the century. At one point, two or three years ago, I had reached well over 200, and my belt was on the first notch. Like I say, I refuse to keep scales in the house.

Now, since the beginning of this year, I've been dropping the pounds again. If this goes on, I may have to move from XXL to XL shirts. Hard to say just what has done the trick. Exercise? Not like I ought to, and my exercise bike, sad to say, pretty much just sits there gathering dust. Diet? That seems to be a large part of it. Key principles: cut out all candy; cut out most if not all pop; avoid french fries; pizza not so often; six-inch rather than foot-long sandwiches at Subway. Lately I've been eating smaller suppers, so that I usually arrive at the next morning with noticeable hunger pangs.

It really is weird to feel my clothes getting loose on me. For several years there, I had pretty much given up any thought of losing weight. Now... well, I can look down at my stomach and see the difference.

Via Crucis Triptych

2007-10-12T07:38:00.001-05:00

All the items I've been ordering online lately, and here's yet another that arrived the other day. It's a small triptych, with the stations of the cross on it. Via crucis. The way of the cross. O crux ave, spes unica!

Small, only about 4½ inches tall. Black leather, with embossed panels of oxidized silver. Gold trim. It unfolds to stand on a tabletop, or you can fold it up to just about the shape and size of a billfold. Literally pocket sized, and exquisite workmanship.

This is another one of those items that is so wondrously low-tech, and just such a funky idea. I mean, who would ever have thought of such an item? But once you think of it, it seems like a natural. And timeless: I can almost imagine some English merchant, some Italian noble, some German hawksman, carrying it with him circa 1597.

Motorcycle-Taxi

2007-10-12T07:37:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a dream that somehow I was a student again at age 51, and I was back in North Carolina, this time not in Durham but in Chapel Hill. And I was going to catch a taxi out to some shopping mall, and I hailed a fellow driving a motorcycle-taxi.

And in this motorcycle-taxi, the idea was that I, as the passenger, would sit on a seat right on top of the front wheel, up in front of the driver. I can't imagine how he could see where he was going, with me perched up there in front of him. And I was fastened into the seat with a body harness to keep me from falling out. And we went roaring off down the street through heavy traffic.

And it was hard for me to describe to this guy where I was going, after more than 15 years I had forgotten the names of many of the streets. But I said yeah, going to the mall, and when we got there we went roaring right inside the mall and tearing down amongst pedestrian shoppers with a loud roar on the motorcycle-taxi. And it was a split-level mall, more like one I remembered from over in Raleigh.

And I was looking for a place that served Greek food, which was on the upper level, though we were on the lower level. But we got there at last, the motorcycle roaring right in amongst people sitting at tables and eating Greek food. And the taxi driver told me my fare came to $2.60, so I gave him a five and said, "Keep the change."

And then the owner of the Greek joint came out from behind the counter, and I told him I wanted a gyros plate, pointing at some picture on glass lit from behind up on the wall. And he was asking me what I wanted to drink, pointing to another picture on glass up on the wall, and explaining to me the difference between two kinds of Greek drink and which went best with a gyros sandwich.

And then I woke up.

Elvis TV Special

2007-10-11T07:33:00.001-05:00

ELVIS: THE REAL TRUTH, PART 2 [17] [27] [36] (Documentary; 1992) Bill Bixby hosts a sequel to the 1986 inquiry into the fate of Elvis Presley and his mysterious alleged "death." Featured: a tape recording purported to be from Elvis in hiding. Leads up to the dramatic climax of a grainy black-and-white video of a man striding toward the viewer down a narrow hallway, with the sun just behind his head so that his features are drowned out in a nimbus of light: "And as for Elvis, some folk say that he may some day soon re-turn." (A woman sitting on a couch watching the show breaks out weeping.) To lend credibility to the narrative, halfway through the show Bixby metamorphoses into the Incredible Hulk.

What Did the High Step Say to the Low Step?

2007-10-10T07:52:00.001-05:00

When I was five years old, I came up with a joke which I thought was just hilarious:

Q: What did the high step say to the low step?

A: "You're too low to step on!"

I dunno, demented as I am, I still think it's funny. You know? They're both steps! They're both made to be stepped on! Though it's one of those things, either you get it, or else you don't.

Anyhow, for my sixth birthday I was going to be a guest on a local TV show called Circus 3. A ventriloquist named Howie Olson, a dummy called Cowboy Eddie, a bunch of kids sitting in the peanut gallery on little bleachers off to the side, and some chit chat in between airing various cartoons. I insisted to my folks that I was going to tell that joke live on the show. And my parents, watching from the next room through glass, were terrified that I was actually going to find some way to break in and tell that joke on the air...

How to Make a Leftist Cry over a Flag Burning

2007-10-10T07:51:00.002-05:00

It just occurred to me. Leftists, ordinarily so blasé and so laissez faire over flag burnings, could be made to shed real tears (and not just crocodile tears) if you were to burn... a United Nations flag.

I can just see them now, shrieking, raging, sputtering, indignant, and possessed of a strange new vexillophilia.

Colder

2007-10-10T07:51:00.001-05:00

What's going on lately? After a string of highs in the 80s last week— Sunday it got up into the upper 80s, unbearable humidity— now these past couple of days it feels like October.

Currently 44°, forecast today is for a high in the lower 50s. I didn't even wake up this morning till seven. Huddled in bed beneath my Hudson Bay point blanket, warm in a chilly house.

Of course as usual there's no middle ground between highs in the 50s and highs in the mid to upper 80s. If you live in these parts, highs in the 60s and 70s almost don't exist.

Surreal Art

2007-10-09T07:25:00.000-05:00

Oh wow. It's the surreal paintings of Vladimir Kush, Part 1. And also Part 2.

While we're at it, let's throw in the surreal paintings of Jacek Yerka.

I think my favorite is the trojan rhinoceros. Or the gigantic dragonfly inside a huge hall. Or the swans swimming in a maze...

Far out, man!

"Use Only As a Tire Thumper"

2007-10-08T08:32:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm on a roll lately, buying obscure but cool items online. Here's one that arrived the other day, a genuine Ozark Tire Thumper, 19 inches of cedar, weighted with a solid lead core. Grooved handle, super strong, leather thong. Tire thumpers are allegedly used by truck drivers to see if their tires are underinflated, you know, give the tire a good sound thump and you can tell by the sound if the tire is low on air.

Something shady about this tire thumper, though. You'll notice it looks like nothing so much as a sawed-off baseball bat. A sawed-off baseball bat weighted with lead: yes, the center of the "bat" is drilled out and filled with solid lead. Heavy! One might almost suspect this tire thumper of being sold for thumping things other than tires. Note, stamped on the side of the tire thumper it reads, Use Only As A TIRE THUMPER.

Oh really? What else might it be used as? Skull thumper, maybe? Kneecap thumper? On the package it says, sold for use as a Tire Thumper for checking tire pressure only. In other words, just because it looks like a lead-weighted sawed-off baseball bat, don't you go getting any ideas! Add to that how this Ozark Tire Thumper has a way of turning up for sale on "self-defense" websites. Oh, and shipping is prohibited to several states, plus all of Canada. I also find on some discussion forums that if the cops pull you over and find a Tire Thumper in your car, in some localities you could be charged with carrying a concealed weapon, even if you've got tires to be thumped.

Sounds mighty suspicious to me. Though this Tire Thumper is certainly not concealed, leaning against the wall right next to my bed. For years I've had a little souvenir Chicago Cubs bat sitting there, one of those miniature souvenir baseball bats that's skinny as a toothpick and weighs about three ounces. This Ozark Tire Thumper, 19 weighty inches of solid cedar and lead, will come much more in useful for me, should I ever wake up in the middle of the night and hear Mr. Burglar's footsteps creaking up the staircase in the dark.

Not that I'm saying it's likely. But just in case, forearmed is forearmed. And let the burglar beware!

Besides, I already am responsible for two or three out of the top 25 Google search results for "sawed-off baseball bat."

A Balmy October

2007-10-06T09:34:00.000-05:00

Day after day with highs in the 80s. Last night at midnight it was only down to 76°. Now today once again the forecast is for highs in the mid 80s.

This is October, mind you. October in northernmost Iowa, just two cornfields south of the Minnesota state line. I'm sitting here in my study, in tee shirt, shorts, and Birkenstocks, with the floor fan running.

In October, mind you. Day after day. Crazy. I'm tempted to put up pictures of all the flowers that are still blooming out in front of the house.

Odd Third Choices

2007-10-05T06:53:00.001-05:00

My favorite cola is neither Coke nor Pepsi, but RC.

My favorite browser is neither Internet Explorer nor Firefox, but Opera.

My favorite beer is neither Budweiser nor Miller, but Point Special.

My favorite operating system is neither Windows XP nor Mac OS X, but Linux.

On the radio I prefer to listen neither to AM nor to FM, but rather to shortwave.

I prefer to write neither with ballpoint nor with pencil, but rather with a fountain pen.

Given my choice of board games, I'd prefer neither Chess nor Checkers, but rather the Japanese game of Shogi.

Toss a coin, and I'm likely to call neither heads nor tails, but rims (let's not get into the one time in high school when a friend tossed a nickel in the air, and I called rims correctly)...

It's a consistent thread running through my life: given two choices, I often prefer some obscure, unheard of, far-distant third choice. The only wonder is, I don't vote Libertarian.

Red Faturan Greek Worry Beads

2007-10-04T07:48:00.002-05:00

Not too long ago I was blogging about some yellow Indian trading beads that I picked up years back. Well, at the risk of sounding like déjà vu all over again, here are some more beads I picked up just recently. Greek worry beads.

Ran across them on a website out there. A website over in Greece. And of course I had to order them, and they arrived here from Greece much more quickly than I'd been expecting. I think the mailman is puzzled at all these packages I keep receiving from overseas.

Anyhow. Greek worry beads, Greek men have a custom of fiddling with them and clacking them around. And these beads are made of clear red faturan.

Faturan is a sort of synthetic amber. Cheaper than amber, and much more durable. Faturan was invented by an Egyptian chemist, and then the formula was lost during World War II. Never been successfully duplicated since. The seller tells me that these faturan beads date back to the period from around 1920 to 1940.

Thirty-three beads going around the loop, divided into three groups of eleven by two smaller spacer beads. The larger bead at the end is called the "priest," and then there are two more small beads at the very end. The beads are overall in very good condition, you can tell they've seen use, and in a couple of them you can see little stress fractures inside the bead, the kind of fracture that results from clacking beads together too hard. There's a warmth to the beads, and they're bright, pellucid, with an odd fragrance. Frankincense bakelite, that's what comes to mind.

Just so happens the number and arrangement of the beads is the same as in a string of Greek Orthodox prayer beads. (Actually there's a historical connection, too; 33 beads, one of several possible numbers of beads or knots.) All that's missing is a tassel on the end ("to wipe the tears away with"). Well, I've got a red silk tassel on order from elsewhere online, and when it arrives I may be so foolhardy as to attempt to attach it.

And yes, of course, these red faturan beads have found a place on my nightstand, right alongside those yellow Indian trading beads. One good set of beads deserves another.

Hats Off to Big Brother!

2007-10-03T07:15:00.000-05:00

They're tightening the screws over in the UK. First it was license plate reading cameras used for computerized tracking of every vehicle in the country. Then it was a smoking ban in the pubs. Now comes word of a growing trend in those newly smoke-free pubs: remove your hat, or get out.

The reason for the ban? As one barman candidly put it, "We don't allow hats to be worn in the bar. We absolutely don't allow it. We need all faces to be seen by the CCTV [closed circuit television cameras]."

In another pub, a woman was told to remove her rain hat because the "CCTV camera would not be able to see her face clearly enough." As the pub owner explained, "it was pub policy to always ask people to remove their hats. 'It's all to do with the CCTV. We have 13 cameras inside the pub...'"

Writer Neil Davenport observes:

The enforcement of such a bizarre rule as the 'hat ban' may be an attempt to assert control in the name of tackling crime... But the fact that such a ban seems to have been accepted at all shows how a demand for security and safety permeates society at present. It's interesting that while respectable pensioners have kicked up a fuss at the hat ban, younger people have tended to acquiesce to the demand to remove their headgear. In fact, surveillance is more or less seen as acceptable if it leads to a greater sense of security...

What lies behind such demand for safety and security is a perception that individual autonomy is problematic in and of itself. Thus all individuals need some kind of rules and regulation because anyone can suddenly 'get out of hand'... there is something servile about forcing customers to 'remove their hats', with ugly echoes of the 'doffing your cap' reverence to society's supposed 'betters' in the past. In this case, it's a reverence to New Britain's principles of authority, order and knowing-your-place.

You know, 10 or 20 years ago nobody would've believed such a ban would ever be implemented in the real world. Nobody would've imagined that people would stand for it. But the British license plate tracking scheme has already been imported to some cities in the US. Any bets on how long it'll be before the British "hat ban" follows?

As Davenport puts it, "So the government hasn't made wearing hats in pubs illegal (yet)... Making people take their hats off isn't the end of the world— but it fits into a corrosive, creeping process of restricting our freedoms, large and small."

Ethnic Mix

2007-10-01T13:02:00.000-05:00

Like many an American, I'm something of an ethnic mix. A mongrel, a mutt, if you will.

I'm a quarter Norwegian and a quarter German, that's the easy part of it. The other half is an indeterminate mix of English and Welsh, with a sliver of Scottish thrown in.

On census forms I enter myself as "English-Welsh." I guess the Welsh part of it is what I really identify with. What, you don't pick up on the Celtic aspect of me from this blog? Mad Welshman, and all that?

Though it all tends to boil down, over the course of a couple of generations, into one big Mulligan stew. My Great-grandma spoke German fluently, she spoke English with a German accent. My Grandma could understand German just fine, and speak it okay if she put her mind to it. My Dad picked up some words and phrases in German. Me, I was totally innocent of the German language until I took a German reading course somewhere along the line in my academic studies: reading, no idea how to speak or pronounce it, and of course 20 years later it's all fled my mind.

On the other side of the family, at age 102½ my Grandma is still fluent in Norwegian. She was born in this country, but didn't learn English until she started school.

The usual pattern is, culturally assimilated no later than the third generation. I've sometimes wondered what I would've done if I'd been born into some small ethnic group in this country with its own language, you know, Navajo, Louisiana Cajun, or whatever. Somehow I suspect I would've zeroed in on the language and other aspects of the culture, immersed myself in it, and carried it on yet another generation. A generation further than usual, even.

Judging by that language of my own which I actually did concoct, I think that supposition is not too far fetched.

The Sengbusch Ideal Junior Stamp Moistener

2007-09-28T07:39:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, my Dad had some items on his office desk which just fascinated me. One of them was a small black ceramic dealie, more or less cubical, with a black ceramic wheel which turned inside of it. The Sengbusch Ideal Junior stamp moistener. Idea was, you'd pour a little water down into the well inside the cube, and then when you turned the wheel, the surface of the wheel would come up wet with water from underneath. So then you could run the back side of a postage stamp across the top of the wheel, and voilà!

Sure beat having to lick the stamp, especially if you needed to put a bunch of stamps on a whole stack of envelopes. Even if it was only a single stamp, hey, mucilage, you don't know where that horse hoof has been. I always thought this stamp moistener was a really neat idea. Funky. Plus, it was ingenious but simple. Simple enough that the ancient Romans, or for that matter the ancient Sumerians, could've invented it, if only they'd had postage stamps.

My Dad's stamp moistener had a little chip out of it. When I was two years old, he lent the stamp moistener out to somebody, and they dropped it on the floor. Oops!

Well, one day not long before I moved over here to Iowa, I was out at a Goodwill store, and what should I see amidst the bric a brac on their shelves but a stamp moistener identical to my Dad's. Without a chip, even! Black ceramic. I turned it over, and between the four little feet on the unglazed underside it read SENGBUSCH IDEAL JUNIOR MILWAUKEE, WIS. MADE IN U.S.A. What's more, they were selling it for only 39¢, mere pocket change. I snatched it up, and when I moved here to Iowa, I put my Sengbusch stamp moistener on my office desk.

Only problem was, I quickly discovered that the US Postal Service had changed over completely to non-mucilage peel-and-stick sticker type postage stamps. Just when this happened, I don't know: I hadn't been sending many letters in the several years before I moved over here (long story). Something of a disappointment: no sooner did I find my own cool black ceramic Sengbusch Ideal Junior stamp moistener, than I learn it's now obsolete.

Nonetheless, it still sits on my desk. Some items are just too cool to discard. In defiance of so-called "progress." Call me a Selective Luddite™, but when we let go of horse-hoof mucilage stamps, and ceramic quasi-Sumerian stamp moisteners, we let go of a little piece of our souls.

Repairs, Automotively Speaking

2007-09-27T07:18:00.003-05:00

Pardon me if I'm somewhat fragmented this morning, I've got to rush into town to have my Jeep looked into. Longtime problem is getting worse and worse. See, when I first start the engine cold, then drive only a few miles and shut it off, well, if I try to restart it again any time soon, it doesn't want to restart. Absolutely dead beneath the hood. Have to wait a few minutes before it will start again.

Only it's getting worse, now it's not just a few miles, and it's not just a few minutes. Tuesday evening I purner got stranded down in Lansing, which is not just any few miles from here, and it took half an hour to restart, which is not just any few minutes. Missed our Lions meeting, too, in the bargain.

So I gotta get this problem fixed. It just will not do, never to know when restart may mean sit and wait a while.

What Did I Tell You?

2007-09-27T07:18:00.001-05:00

Heard on the radio this morning that Hillary wants to be known as the "health care President." Oh dear. Didn't she try to pull this on us once before?

Enjoy your bacon double cheeseburgers while you can.

Two by Two, Hurrah! Hurrah!

2007-09-27T07:17:00.001-05:00

Whilst websurfing I stumbled across an interesting piece at A Mule in the Chapter House. An account of an early childhood encounter with the sterile, soul-stifling forces of mid 20th century Liberal Protestantism.

And then people wonder why the Presbyterian Church nationwide has suffered a net membership loss of more than 45% over the past 40 years. As a Presbyterian minister, I'm just damn glad I'm located in a remote and traditional corner of the country where I don't have to contend with such self-dissolute nonsense.

Dang Liberal Protestantism. Millstone around the neck, depths of the sea, etc...

Bluebottle Email

2007-09-26T07:37:00.001-05:00

Like many of us, I've got a number of "extra" email addresses, more than I can really keep straight. I've got the official email address provided to me by my feckless Internet Service Provider, StupidISP.com. I've got the email address that came with my personal website, paulburgess.org. I've got Hotmail, I've got Yahoo Mail, I've got Google's Gmail, I've got Lycos mail. I've even still got the very first email address I ever signed up for almost ten years ago with Excite.

However, over the past three years I've been using an email service which has long since become my "regular" email address, my main email address, my daily workhorse email address. I'm talking about Bluebottle Email.

If you haven't gotten to know Bluebottle already, maybe you should.

You can use Bluebottle with Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird, just like the email address you got from your ISP. And that's how I usually use Bluebottle— as POP mail. Or you can also use Bluebottle through a secure webmail interface, just like Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, which means you can access Bluebottle from anywhere. (Come to think of it, Bluebottle's POP mail connection can also be set up to be secured and encrypted.)

Bluebottle has all sorts of nifty features— among other things, it's spam-free. Honestly. A simple challenge-response system is transparent to my regular correspondents, accessible to a first-timer who wants to reach me, and I have full control over who I'll let through, and bye-bye spam.

Best of all, Bluebottle is free! Or rather, all these features and more are available in the Bluebottle Free service. If you wish, you can pay for Bluebottle Access or Bluebottle Premium, which come with even more cool features. I've been a Bluebottle Premium user now for almost two years. Hey, you can try it out for free, for as long as you want, and if you like it you can always upgrade to Access or Premium.

In the interest of full disclosure, Bluebottle did have some technical rough sledding (to put it mildly) when they first rolled out their pay services at the beginning of 2006. But they've long since worked that out, and I've seen nary a hiccup in their service in well over a year now. Unlike a lot of email services out there, they really do try and they really do care. Yes, this is a business, but for its developers Bluebottle is also a labor of love. Like I say, you can always try them out for free, and then upgrade if you wish. They sure beat the alleged email service provided to me by my small local one-horse ISP, StupidISP.com.

Plus, Bluebottle is just a funky name. Your name at bluebottle dot com, it has a nice ring to it. Funky. Bluebottle. Check them out.

No Doughnuts for You!

2007-09-25T07:39:00.001-05:00

Oh great. From Protein Wisdom comes the news story of some seniors in Putnam County, New York, who have been told that doughnuts may no longer be donated to their senior centers: "Officials were concerned that the county was setting a bad nutritional precedent by providing mounds of doughnuts and other sweets to seniors."

Oh yes, the nanny state groweth apace:

Stan Tuttle, coordinator of nutritional services for the county's Office for the Aging, said the program had gotten out of control. As many as 16 cases of breads, cakes and pastries were delivered, by various means, to the William Koehler Memorial Senior Center each day...

Caregivers there and elsewhere say the doughnut debate illustrates the difficulty of balancing nutrition and choice when providing meals to the elderly.

"Senior citizens can walk down to the store and buy doughnuts. Nobody's stopping them," said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington.

But he notes that older people have high rates of heart disease and high blood pressure and says senior citizen centers, nursing homes and assisted-living centers should not be worsening the health problems of seniors.

More and more, it seems Food is shaping up as the new Tobacco. Like a thunderhead on the far horizon, the day is coming when they'll sue Mickey D's and Hardee's and Wendy's for gigabucks, and Big Brother will tell all of us to eat our veggies and don't you dare touch those eeeevil doughnuts.

The "second-hand smoke" of Food will arrive when they institute the coming "big fix" to the health care system. Once the federal government embroils itself in health insurance for all, it will become incumbent upon us to follow government ~~suggestions~~ orders regarding what you eat, how much you exercise, and whether you take your prescribed medications. Mustn't up your neighbor's tax burden by not living right, you know.

Perhaps your food purchases will be tracked and entered into a centralized database as they're scanned at the supermarket, and the cash register will beep when you try to go over your government-mandated allotment: "Oh, I'm sorry, we can't sell you any more doughnuts this month, you've used up your junk food ration for September." Perhaps it will become illegal to purchase any food that is not scanned and entered into the database. Visions of furtive purchases of black-market doughnuts in some back alley...

You think I'm kidding? Well, only slightly. You think I'm being paranoid? Well, not long ago I would've thought so too; though one has only to listen to Presidential hopeful John Edwards' recent health care recommendations to realize that nightmare scenarios like these can no longer be entirely written off as black-helicopter paranoia...

Like I say, Food is shaping up as the new Tobacco.

(h/t Naftali @ Dean's World)

Telemarketers

2007-09-25T07:38:00.002-05:00

Or, well, not quite telemarketers, I guess both these calls yesterday fit through loopholes in the national Do Not Call list. But still...

One call yesterday afternoon, from the bank that issues the credit card I've had for over 20 years. Some damn recording, wanting to switch me over to a new card with a lower interest rate. Hello, I pay off my balance in full every month, so what do I care what the interest rate is? I hung up on the recording.

I repeat, I've had this credit card for over 20 years. A few times they've phoned me to make sure it was actually I who had made a purchase, when it was a big purchase and slightly outside my usual buying patterns. But this is the first time they've ever phoned me to try to push some new service on me. Hope they don't make a habit of it, or I may be looking for a new credit card elsewhere...

Second call into the evening hours, from (I think) the Newt Gingrich campaign, something about how Gingrich is down on the decline of America, and will I listen to his recorded message and then wait for them to come back on afterwards and get my reaction... Said I: "Sorry, no thanks." Then, without waiting for a reply, I hung up.

Really. Political calls. Calls from outfits you're doing business with. I realize that technically these slip through a loophole. But do these people really think I want to be disturbed at home with such needless digressions and unsolicited distractions?

Just Another Headache

2007-09-25T07:38:00.001-05:00

I was laid out yesterday by another one of my wondrous migraines. Right side of the head feeling like it was about to lift off into the air. Nausea. Thank God it was my day off. In fact my headaches often seem to hit me on Mondays. Seems I've read somewhere that migraines will hit when you first start relaxing after being in a higher gear for a while.

On the positive side of the ledger, electricians showed up yesterday, and I have running water again after going without over the weekend— some kind of electrical problem with the well pump.

Yellow Indian Trading Beads

2007-09-21T08:07:00.000-05:00

Back in the 1990s, '93, '94, '95, I was living in a town down in north central Illinois, and there was a little antique shop there out on the highway. Sort of place that's a combination antique shop and gun shop, if my memory serves me correctly. Most of the stuff they had there was way out of my range, but they did have a quantity of Indian trading beads for cheap, cheap, cheap. So I sunk the price of a meal at McDonald's on these yellow trading beads. Because they were cool, you know, in a hippy-dippy way. Cool, and funky.

Yellow glass beads, with a rather rough and dull surface, not smooth. Yellow glass beads with streaks through them, streaks of blue or black or green. I have no idea whether these beads are genuine, whether they're old Indian trading beads, or newer, or something bought out of a Johnson Smith catalog. Whatever, they're just cool. And funky.

The beads were originally strung together on a dried corn shuck, but that didn't hold up, so I restrung them on several strands of thread, blue and orange. They usually sit on my nightstand, alongside my bed, with various other such curios. Yellow Indian trading beads. Funky.

Ankle

2007-09-20T06:56:00.002-05:00

My bad ankle is acting up especially bad this morning. Think I'm going to leave the computer be, and go have my morning coffee whilst my ankle soaks in a pan of hot water.

Ah, the joys of being past 50...

Ave Imperator

2007-09-20T06:56:00.001-05:00

In second year confirmation class last night, one of my students somehow managed to morph the Emperor Constantine into the Emperor Palpatine. Complete with Force lightning shooting out from his hands.

There's a point buried in there somewhere, I'm sure— or would be, if my student knew Constantine from Adam— but by that hour of the evening I was too tired to ferret it out. :-)

"Cero, Nueve, Uno, Nueve, Cinco, Nueve, Cuarenta y Ocho..."

2007-09-19T07:56:00.001-05:00

Happy birthday to my brother Steven, who turns 48 today!

The New Hudson's Bay Point Blanket Is Here!

2007-09-18T08:48:00.000-05:00

Well, recently I realized that I needed to get all new bedding for the impending colder weather. So I got online and ordered it. And as of yesterday, it's all here. Flannel sheets. A new goose-down pillow. And first and foremost, a new Hudson's Bay point blanket.

There's nothing to compare with a Hudson's Bay blanket. Pure 100% wool. Heavy. Thick. I got a 4-point blanket (you can see the points, or indigo bars, right on top), multi-stripe, blue, yellow, red, green. There is just nothing to compare. Talk about warm on a cold winter night!

This is in fact the second treasured Hudson's Bay blanket I've owned. The first one, identical, I bought back in 1993, when I had just emerged, in my mid 30s, for the very first time in my adult years, from the poverty of student life. From then till now, I have slept with that blanket on my bed, in the summertime even when I can get away with it; relaxed beneath that blanket on the sofa; used that blanket for everything but a pup tent; and in general worn that blanket out until all the nap is completely worn off and the edges are frayed and unraveling beyond hope of repair. Sort of like Linus and his blanket! Yes, I had a special blanket when I was a kid; though oddly enough, it was not made of wool.

So the new Hudson's Bay point blanket takes its place on my bed. And the old blanket is retired to the cedar-chest genizah. I must confess, I have mixed feelings about this: that old blanket has served me well for years, and I've rather grown attached to it. But heft both blankets at once, and you can tell that the old blanket has lost half its weight or more to heavy wear. I'd guess the new blanket weighs at least six pounds.

By the way, these blankets have quite a history as an item sold and traded by the Hudson's Bay Company up in Canada, going back hundreds of years. Harold Tichenor's illustrated book on the history of Hudson's Bay point blankets is very much worth reading.

As for the new pillow, it's filled with goose down. Very comfortable, a real step up from the foam rubber or polyester fill or whatever horrific stuff the old pillow was filled with. And the flannel sheets are a wonder. Note those dark red ticking stripes! "Ticking stripes": learned a new term there, I never knew before what they were called, though I'm familiar with the design. Quite retro, somehow it reminds me of bedding or awnings or whatever from back in the 1920s or somesuch bygone era. Which, Selective Luddite™ that I am, suits me just fine.

Battlezone, Beer, and FORTRAN

2007-09-17T07:11:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking back to those days, 1979 or 1980, when my routine ran like this: I'd be out at the library of a weeknight, studying till ten or eleven in the evening, working on some proofs in Fourier analysis or algebraic topology or partial differential equations. Writing on pads of yellow legal paper, pushing the proof through on this front or that, hit a roadblock, puzzle over it sometimes for an hour or more and then suddenly the next step to take would dawn on me in a flash. Maybe work a while then, grading quizzes or homework for a calculus discussion section I was teaching.

Then, maybe 11 PM or so, I'd sling my backpack over my shoulder and head down State Street. Just off the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Head down to State Street Brats, duck in the door, pick up a copy of the Daily Cardinal or the Badger Herald if one was to be had. Get a beer, tap beer was a quarter back in those days. Retire to a booth in a semi-unlit corner.

Or I might also play a game of Battlezone, they had Battlezone at State Street Brats: two games for a quarter, this was one of the very first primitive video games, just then replacing the old mechanical pinball machines. Battlezone, crude 3D tanks appear in green wireframe outline on a monochrome monitor, sound of tank engines, crude 3D wireframe boulders here and there, crude 3D wireframe mountains in the distance. Maneuvering in a virtual world, I take aim and shoot at enemy tanks, blasting them before they can blast me.

Most of the tanks are broad and squat. Once in a while there's a thin, sleek 3D green wireframe tank, and those are quicker, deadlier. But deadliest of all are the guided missiles (3D green wireframe) that come buzzing toward you from over the mountains, buzzing with a noise like an old prop plane engine. You've got to shoot just right to hit those, or else the scene will be covered with crude green wireframe cracks running all over the screen, GAME OVER.

Or there was an Asteroids game, equally crude monochrome wireframe asteroids. I think this was back before PacMan or Centipede.

Afterwards it was back over a block or two to the fourth-floor apartment, up above the KK (Kollege Klub), which I shared with my brother. The little U-shaped efficiency apartment, over in one corner sat my old early 60's wood-cabinet stereo which played vinyl records which were, you know, all we had in those days, nobody had ever heard of CDs. It was a different world, a world of President Carter and "malaise" and the Ayatollah Khomeini, Newsweek written at a reading level several grade levels higher than it is today.

Next morning I'd teach that calculus discussion section, then over to the computer science building where I'd finish writing a program in FORTRAN, then type it up on punched cards at a keypunch machine. Or if I had a spare moment, I might read Athanasius or Justin Martyr, volumes checked out of the University library, which is how I eventually ended up where I am today; but that's another story.

I think back to that world of almost 30 years ago, and how different a world it was, and how different a person I was. Give me that long again, and I'll be 80, white-haired, and retired. It makes a person think.

Trainroad

2007-09-14T07:11:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a dream that I was down in the ditch alongside the railroad tracks, down there in the ditch out in the country alongside the trainroad. And now a train was coming by, with smoke billowing out of its smokestack, and I saw this fellow run up out of the brush and jump on the train. So I thought I would do so too. And I ran up out of the ditch, and I jumped up in through the open door of a boxcar.

Only when I got to my feet and stood up, I found that this other fellow and I were really standing in an area at the back of the locomotive, and all the train people, engineer and brakeman and conductor and all, were sitting ahead of us inside the locomotive, facing away from us. And after a minute of uneasy silence, one of the "train people" up front began speaking to us without turning his head back to us, "We can see you, and we often get people jumping on this train, and now you have three choices," and basically the choices were (1) go to jail, or (2) pay a fine of several hundred dollars, or (3) be let off the train out here halfway to Dubuque, even though that would mean leaving us stranded in the countryside with no way to get home.

So I chose to be let off the train, and they stopped the train (still without any of them turning their heads back to look at us) and I got off the train in the brush out here in the middle of the countryside. And wondering how I was going to get home, from halfway to Dubuque. Only I walked a bit, and I came to a village, only this village seemed to be not in Iowa but somehow "amidst the mountains" up in Alaska.

(And it also came to me that the fellow who jumped on the train was a confederate of the railroad, used over and over again to jump on the train and lure other people like me to follow his example.)

And then I was in the sheriff's office, and it was evil Sheriff Buck off of American Gothic, and he was sitting there in his oak office chair at his oak desk. And I was standing there, and then this guy came sauntering in, looking like a gambler ne'er-do-well from old New Orleans, wearing a raincoat overcoat slicker, and it was made clear to me as if in a word of knowledge that this gambler man was coming to the village in evil, and to get back at me for jumping on the train. And I said hi to him as he walked by, and he said hi to me.

Then next time it was a scene in the village where I was being asked to leave, on pain of great disasters breaking forth. And somewhere down the valley amidst the mountains suddenly a house exploded roaring up in flames. And then after a little while another house exploded. And it was well but darkly understood that I'd better snap to it, or else. Only I wouldn't, because that would be giving in to evil, and to the evil New Orleans gambler dude.

And now the next scene, and I'm standing next to the dirt runway of the local airstrip, and suddenly in a flash without warning a small single-engine plane comes streaking in for a landing, kablammm!!!, and the plane goes tearing at high speed down the runway in flames balanced on its nose. And as it goes by, several houses in a row alongside the runway are all exploding in flames at high speed, kablamm, kablammm, kablammmm, KABLAMMMMM!!! And then a kid comes flying through the air screaming, right up against the side of a house, and suddenly a UPS truck flying through the air and its rear end smashes right into the kid and the side of the house.

And I realize, in horror, that this is an escalation of the efforts to get me out of this village and to surrender to the New Orleans gambler who is in with evil Sheriff Buck.

So then I decide to fight back. And I run everything in reverse like a movie film going backwards, the UPS truck flies away from the house, the kid is being carried off on a stretcher ("Only one little chip out of a bone in my toe"), the houses are de-exploding and returning to normal, the plane is streaking backwards down the runway and backwards up into the sky. And now I'm running a trace on this evil power, tracing it back to find where it's coming from.

And sure enough, it's that evil New Orleans gambler man in his rain slicker, and suddenly I'm right there, teleported to about ten yards away from him, and his back is turned to me, and between us is his evil hot-coal brazier tripod with smoke billowing up out of it, which he uses to cause disasters, and so I levitate the brazier tripod up in the air ("Use the Force, Luke!") and I overturn it and bring it right down on his shoulders and the back of his head, and he's screaming in agony and evil at the burning hot coals being brought down right on top of him, and I know this is only the beginning of our epic battle to the death, each of us wielding great powers beyond comprehension.

Only then I woke up.

JUDY 451

2007-09-13T07:03:00.000-05:00

Back in the 90s when I was living down in Illinois I noticed the bizarre proliferation of personalized license plates with meaningless numbers tacked on the end.

I remember one, though, which made strange sense: JUDY 451

Ah, yes: JUDY 451, "the temperature at which punch bowls catch fire, and burn"...

Peace, Quiet, and Solitude

2007-09-11T07:29:00.000-05:00

Over at The Missal, Jack G finds himself home alone for the first time in years, when the rest of the family is away for several days. And he has an interesting meditation on rediscovering peace and quiet:

It had been so long since I had really been by myself that I had almost entirely forgotten what it was like to be in solitude, how different it is than having others around you, and how utterly beneficial it is from time to time to be alone. Completely alone and without the company of other people.

It took me awhile to adjust, but once I began to remember what solitude was like, and how much I could do (or not do as the case might be) I took as much advantage out of the situation as I possibly could. I think the best thing about solitude, in my case anyway, is that since I live so far out in the country, and since so much open land surrounds my home and estate, that aside from the occasional dog-bark, I could by simply killing the power to any form of distraction make it entirely silent... could surround myself in silence. Could suppress the din until I could hear nothing but the wind, nothing but my own breathing and heartbeat, nothing but the crickets at night, or the thunder on the approaching storm. It is almost indescribable how good it is to be able to enforce silence whenever you wish.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love my family, more than mere words can express, and enjoy their company; again more than speaking will tell... however it has been so many years since I was completely separated from them, that is, when no member of my family has been around me, and so many years since I have been in total solitude that I had almost forgotten what it was to be entirely by myself. Alone. And I had forgotten how good it is to be alone, how refreshing... I have remembered over the past few days why so many monks and hermits have sought solitude like a treasure-hoard and have spoken of it as a rare and precious gift of God, which is to be pursued when possible. It makes one efficient, relaxed, calm, and peaceful. It makes one unhurried and appreciative of life, it allows one to recreate, to organize one's thoughts, to master the mind, attend the body, and to physic the soul. It reminds you that today is today, that hours can be long and fulfilling when not consumed with countless diversionary tasks and pointless distractions, that solitude helps to unmeasure the measure which compresses and shortens our lives by flooding them with minutiae.

Living alone in a big old house on a gravel road far out into the countryside, I know how Jack feels. There really is something to the peace and quiet that comes with solitude, a power that wells up out of the heart of silence.

Out here, at times, large trucks or farm machinery will go rumbling by, and then the house rattles and quakes. Apart from that, all is still. I can go most of the day without speaking a word. No radio on, no TV. Peace. Stillness. Relaxed, calm, and peaceful indeed.

Flannel Sheets and All

2007-09-11T07:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday it didn't get up out of the 50s. This morning I turned on the furnace in the house for the first time. Cooler weather is on the way. And that means I'd better get new winter bedding, pronto.

By the end of last winter, my flannel sheets were shot. I mean, worn out and ready for the rag bag. After many, many long years, my faithful old Hudson's Bay Company point blanket is also threadbare, unraveling. And my pillow, which I've had I don't know how long... well, best to keep it covered with a pillowcase, what's underneath is not exactly presentable. That pillow has got to go.

In short, I've got to replace purner everything on top of my bed. And sooner rather than later. Time to look around, and then order online.

The World, Like a Pop-Up Greeting Card

2007-09-10T08:13:00.001-05:00

I never saw the world around me in three dimensions until I was seven years old. I was born with bilateral strabismus, which means I saw through only one eye at a time. Every few minutes, my brain would switch over to the other eye, which led to more than a few spilled glasses of milk when I was a kid. Clumsy? No, it was just my eyes, that glass of milk isn't where it was a moment ago. If this condition isn't fixed by surgery, eventually by age 13 or 14 the brain gets tired of playing hopscotch and shuts one eye off permanently.

So, age seven, in between semesters of second grade, I went in to Madison General Hospital for eye surgery. I was in the hospital five days, I still remember parts of it. It was right before Christmas, Santa came to visit the hospital, he gave me a set of dominoes which I still have.

I will never forget when they took the bandages off my eyes. I looked around me, and for the first time in my life I saw things in three dimensions. As I put it at the time, it was like the whole world around me becoming like one of those pop-up greeting cards. You know, the kind you open up and a little scene pops up from inside in 3D.

A new dimension opened up in the world around me, a dimension the likes of which I'd never dreamed of before in my life. A new dimension, a depth dimension opening up out into. I think that was one of the sources of my later interest in signs and symbols, and of how in more subtle ways new dimensions of depth can open up in a symbol. The whole world around me, opened up and transformed like nothing I ever would've imagined possible.

Orange Sherbet

2007-09-10T08:12:00.001-05:00

Last night I sat down and had a bowl of orange sherbet. (Which, by the way, is pronounced "sherbert.")

Orange sherbet may not be the perfect food, but it comes darn close.

Man or Machine?

2007-09-07T07:40:00.001-05:00

McGehee is writing an interesting story called Inorganism over at his blog. As our technological devices becomes more and more sophisticated, and we grow more and more dependent on them, at what point do the boundaries between man and machine indistinguishably blur?

Regular readers of my blog (all five of them) will recognize that questions of this sort have exercised me in several of my works of fiction. Transhumanism, nanotechnology, AI, genetic engineering, the Singularity... I'm far from convinced that we're headed where some transhumanists and singularitarians say we're headed on these fronts. Though if we are, I tend to take a fairly grim and pessimistic view of it all. We just may luck out. Or more likely we will find out, as Bill Joy put it, Why the Future Doesn't Need Us.

Pronounciation

2007-09-07T07:39:00.000-05:00

I heard a radio announcer the other day pronounce "mature" as "matchurrr." This is one that's always puzzled me, I'm sure there's a history behind it somewhere, but I've always pronounced it as "matoor."

Arrrghhh! Gargle, gargle! Match'rrrrrrrrr! Oh, it's not very matchurrrrr of me to make fun of people for saying matchurrr!

Fred! Fred! Fred! Fred!

2007-09-06T07:26:00.001-05:00

Yes! Fred Thompson enters the race! Go, Fred, Go!

News story here. Video here (warning, 91-megabyte flash video!).

Jack Kerouac and On the Road

2007-09-05T07:15:00.000-05:00

Fifty years ago today Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road, was published. A tale of the frantic cross-continent travels of narrator Sal Paradise and his friend Dean Moriarty, seeking in search of they knew not what, only the rhythm and the pace of life accelerated until they were sprung clear out of any bourgeois frame of reference: "Yes! Yes! We know time!" The tale was autobiographical, an only thinly disguised telling of the journeys of Kerouac himself and his friend Neal Cassady.

They were part of what was known as the Beat Generation, along with other writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. But Kerouac was the greatest writer of all the Beats. He developed a writing style which was based in part on the pacing and the techniques of jazz music. He was trying to make language perform feats well beyond its rated capacity. And in a soaring, efflorescent, noneuclidean way, he did it.

To me, with my interest in signs and symbols, the what and the how and the why of Kerouac's success are of considerable import. But part of it is simply fascination with Kerouac's literary corpus— not only On the Road, but his other writings as well, The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels and Big Sur and Tristessa and Old Angel Midnight and "October in the Railroad Earth" and so many more, oh, and the unfathomable brilliance of Visions of Cody.

I don't know why I didn't discover Jack Kerouac sooner. It wasn't until I was in my mid twenties that I ran across a paperback copy of On the Road, at Powell's Books in downtown Portland, Oregon. You know, that gigantic bookstore on West Burnside, across the street from what was then the Blitz-Weinhard brewery? This was 1983 or 1984.

I read the book, and I loved it. "Yes, yes, we know time!" Then it gathered dust on my shelf until I was in my mid 30s. This was when I began to collect and read everything I could find, by or about Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, John Clellon Holmes, and the entire Beat Generation.

I've never been able to figure quite what it is about the Beats that so grips me. Like I say, part of it is Kerouac's luminescent noneuclidean jazz-inspired prose. But I think part of it has to do with mixed feelings I've always had about the Sixties.

It was during the cultural plate-tectonic shift known as the Sixties— really, the late 1960s on into the early 70s— that I came of age as an individual. Hey, beard, blue jeans, Beatles music, it shows? Without the experience of growing up in the Sixties, I can't imagine who I would be today.

The culture got some of the starch knocked out of it, and that was a good thing. Conformity slipped on a banana peel, and that was a good thing too. There was a genuine sense of spiritual questing. And on some deep level, something happened to the cultural sensorium. Any style or motif current in 1920 or 1950 was still available, in some key, in 1968 or 1998. Art deco? Formica tabletops? Egyptian hieroglyphics? No problem! While much of what flashed across the screen, post-Sixties, would have been unintelligible half a century earlier. Five surreal images per second? Fifty years ago, many TV commercials from the late 1990's would not even have been not understood— they would simply have frozen the brain in sensory gridlock. On a cultural level, on the simple level of images that flit through the mind's eye, the 60s did indeed open wide the doors of perception.

But the Sixties also gave rise to a festering sense of anger, self-righteousness, carefully nursed grievance, which was far from healthy. Rancor in the name of peace, vindictive intolerance in the name of tolerance— a bumper sticker I once saw sums it up: "Support mental health, or I'll kill you!" The nonconformity of the Sixties often struck me as a "nonconformity for the millions," mass produced, everybody different exactly alike, and woe betide the true individualist who differed not only from the conformists, but also from the nonconformists.

I think this is part of what I like about the Beat Generation. They really were different— not just from the mass culture, but from one another as well. They really were blazing their own trail— not just buying into some prefabricated and prepackaged "nonconformity" which was the same in New York and LA, in Pittsburgh and in Denver and in Urbana-Champaign.

"...I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" —Jack Kerouac, On the Road. Published September 5, 1957.

Rome, Constantinople, Hibernia?

2007-09-04T08:24:00.000-05:00

Back when I was a kid I had this weird idea that there had been a Roman emperor who planned to take Ireland, and then build a third capital of the Roman Empire in Ireland, on the Atlantic coast.

Can't tell you where I got this idea from. I had a number of strange notions like this.

I've googled around on this question, no luck. Can anyone tell me, was I on target about this, or was it just some bizarre idea floating to me out of the ether?

Remind Me Not to Vote for John Edwards

2007-09-03T07:50:00.000-05:00

Oh great. Get this:

Edwards backs mandatory preventive care

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK"...

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

Even if I were a Democrat (which I am not) I would be bound and determined, after hearing that one, never to vote for John Edwards.

I mean, every person in this country required to go to the doctor??? Talk about a nanny state! Talk about reducing every American to a ward of the state! Talk about turning every person in the country into a lucrative cash cow for the Health Care ~~System~~ Industry!

And you know what they do when they get a cash cow. They milk it for all it's worth. To say nothing of how doctors would be in that much better a position to push more procedures, more drugs, more surgeries on you, once they've got you as a captive audience. It reminds me of the old, pre-health-insurance-days joke:

First Surgeon: So what did you remove from your patient?
Second Surgeon: Oh, about a thousand dollars.
First Surgeon: What did your patient have?
Second Surgeon: A thousand dollars.

Requiring every American to go to the doctor. Under penalty of federal law, no doubt. Requiring every American to get on the conveyor belt of the Health Care ~~System~~ Industry. Has any plan quite so intrusive and quite so destructive of individual liberty ever been seriously proposed in these United States in living memory?

O Traffic, Where Art Thou?

2007-09-03T07:47:00.000-05:00

Hunh. Several months ago, I was wondering why my blog traffic was growing exponentially— up, in just a few months, from something over a thousand visits per month to more than six thousand visits per month.

Well, wonder no more. That was May, this is September. And over the summer my blog traffic has declined as precipitously as it grew:

Jan: 1770
Feb: 1515
Mar: 3080
Apr: 4726
May: 6236
Jun: 3876
Jul: 3554
Aug: 1434

It all comes down to Google, and in particular, Google Images. My blog has all but dropped out of Google; not quite 100%, but say 99% of the way. A large part of that spike in traffic was due to tons of visits from Google Image searches.

Now I'm back down more to the level of "real" visits. Visits from regular and occasional visitors to my blogs. Visits by way of various links out there. And also visits from various other search engines.

Remaining question: Why did I experience that surge in Google hits there for several months?

Escape to Linux

2007-09-02T07:53:00.001-05:00

It was four years ago this weekend— yes, Labor Day weekend 2003— that I went over to Linux. I had ordered and received a boxed set of Mandrake 9.1, and also a used and reconditioned IBM ThinkPad T20. Installing Linux on the ThinkPad was a breeze, though it took me two or three months to find my sea legs. You know, little things like getting the computer to work with floppy disks or a printer. But before the end of the year I found myself doing anything with Linux that I pleased. If I didn't know how, I could look it up. Wrote a little piece about my experience, Escape to Linux, which achieved some minor notoriety in certain limited quarters in cyberspace.

After Mandrake 9.1, I went over to Mandrake 10.1, then to Mandriva 2006, and most recently to Mandriva 2007. I dunno, I might feel tempted by Ubuntu, but I'm long since familiar with Mandrake/Mandriva, and there is that learning curve to consider. Basically Mandriva just works, or pretty close to; easy to use, and yet at the same time it's easy to get down and dirty with the technical side of things if you want to.

The most annoying thing about Mandriva is their carelessness with quality assurance: you can just bet each final release will come with an armful of obtrusive bugs, some of which they will never get around to fixing. Oh well. Mandriva 2007 is the best release in this regard, of those I've used, since Mandrake 9.1.

And recently I've come full circle: brought that second computer back from vacation with me, the one with Windows XP on it (mostly as a bargaining chip with my ISP, which "doesn't support Linux"). Though I still rely on my ThinkPad, and Linux, for my everyday work and leisure.

Movies You Can Watch Over and Over

2007-08-30T07:50:00.000-05:00

Over at Dean's World they're discussing movies you can watch over and over again. Among several I could list, here are trailers for two of my favorites:

The Matrix: If I had to name a single favorite movie of mine, this could well be it. I have watched it dozens of times.

"The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Kill Bill, Vol. I: Again, I've watched this movie so many times I've lost count. Especially the wondrously surreal sword fight scene. Uma Thurman against, oh, about 80 opponents at once. Amazing. Just amazing.

Not Kill Bill, Vol. II: that one, I find watchable but not especially rewatchable. But Vol. I really is a work of wonder.

As Summer Draws to a Close

2007-08-29T07:47:00.001-05:00

Here we are, coming up on the end of August. By my calendration, summer ends either with the end of August, or with Labor Day weekend. So I gear up once again for the faster and busier season of the fall...

I've lived with this rhythm, summer slower and the rest of the year faster, for most of my life. Because, you know, I've spent most of my life either in various school settings or in various church settings. In either case, things slow down in the summer, then speed back up again for the fall.

As it now stands, I'm gearing up for the rapidly approaching Missionfest, and then the beginning of Confirmation classes, and so it goes.

I was going to read some books this summer; and maybe I did, though don't ask me to name any titles; but I certainly didn't read as many books as I'd been planning. I was going to sort through two large closets of boxes full of old papers, but that's become something of a joke, every summer I say I'm going to do it and every summer it never happens. I was going to relax this summer... well, yes, I did relax.

Seems to me life is best when there's a rhythm to it. Slower in the summer, faster the rest of the year. So I gear up for the coming of the fall season and the fall schedule...

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2007-08-29T07:45:00.000-05:00

Yes, more rain in what has long since become the wettest month on record. Yes, more flooding in areas round about. Yes, more water in my basement, several inches deep.

Handwriting

2007-08-28T06:48:00.001-05:00

In first grade they taught us to print. Then in second grade they taught us cursive handwriting. I caught on, though from the start my handwriting was messy. Also I didn't much care for all the loops and whirls in the standard style of handwriting we learned in school. Writing all those loop-de-loops drove me crazy.

So, starting in fifth grade, I began experimenting. Designing my own style of handwriting. Lose those loops. Try out different styles of letters and ligatures. It took me a while, and then it took me a while longer to become adept at writing in a strange new way. But by the time I was in seventh grade or so, I was very much at ease with writing in a self-designed style which bore little resemblance to any cursive mode taught in school.

A handwriting of my own. It mutated over the years. For a time in my teens, very messy. Here and there, a letter changed: I can still remember the day, late August or early September of 1982, when I changed the way I wrote capital L.

What emerged by age 20 or so was a style of handwriting that looks something like the chrome lettering you see on automobiles. Still somewhat messy, what do you expect from a lefty? Two different ways of writing small f, depending on context. Two different styles of small x. At least five or six radically different ways of writing small t. "O" in "of" written unlike "o" in any other word, clockwise instead of counterclockwise.

I see other peoples' handwriting, sometimes they depart more or less from school-taught handwriting. But rarely do I see anyone who has departed as far, or as deliberately, as I. Part and parcel of living in a self-designed world of my own.

Oddly enough, I continued to use the old school-taught writing alongside my own style of handwriting, on into my mid 20s at least. Often wrote in the school-taught way when I was writing school assignments, or sometimes for others to read. But it's been years, and I doubt I'm fluent in the school-taught handwriting any longer. It's my own style of handwriting or nothing nowadays. When I'm not using the keyboard, which has become ubiquitous in the lives of many of us as never we once would have dreamed.

Fatigued

2007-08-27T08:02:00.001-05:00

Tired. Worn out. Exhausted. So, this being my day off, I'm going to take the day off.

Black Boiling Fuzz

2007-08-24T07:59:00.000-05:00

Last night I was browsing through The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959 and I ran across the following rather arresting passage:

What is happening now is that I literally turn into someone else, not a human creature but man-like: He wears some sort of green uniform. The face is full of black boiling fuzz and what most people would call evil—silly word. I have been seeing him for some time in the mirror. This is nothing, of course. But when other people start seeing him without being briefed or influenced in any way, then something is really there. So far, Brion has seen him (or it). And so has Stern. But Stern left at the wrong time, since it is just in last few weeks that he comes through so clear that people stare at me in restaurants. Enclosed picture will give you some idea.

Somehow this reminds me of back when I was in my early teens, and there was a large mirror on the wall down in the basement, and I would go down there and stare at myself in that mirror. I would stare in the mirror until I began to space out, and things fuzzed out, and then in the mirror my facial features would start winking in and out, disappearing and reappearing one at a time. It was freaky, like some form of self-hypnosis, like an alteration of reality. No black boiling fuzz, though.

FM Morning Shows

2007-08-24T07:56:00.000-05:00

Aiieeeee!! I just turned on the radio to FM, and was reminded once again of why I never listen to FM radio before nine in the morning.

Because morning shows on FM are simply intolerable.

Flooding

2007-08-23T07:53:00.000-05:00

After a dry July, we've been getting an incredible amount of rain around here in August. Just since Saturday morning, I've had 7 inches, and that includes 3.6 inches in 24 hours from Saturday morning through Sunday morning, and 2 inches Tuesday night. Now there are supposed to be more downpours on the way today.

But my little corner of northeast Iowa has gotten off easy compared to some other areas around us, not too far away. Southeast Minnesota has seen flooding like nothing else in living memory. Some places getting over a foot of rain in 24 hours from Saturday morning through Sunday morning. Flash flooding. Mudslides. Roads washed out. Houses washed off their foundation. Whole towns evacuated. And, sad to say, several fatalities. News photos here, here, here, here, and here. No surprise that, with more than a week to go yet in August, this is already the wettest month on record up in La Crosse.

Henry

2007-08-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Over at Dispatches from Blogblivion, Jay and Deb are the proud parents of a brand new baby boy, born Monday August 20 at 7:57 AM, weighing 8 pounds 4 ounces, and 18 inches long.

And Sadie and Valerie have a brand new baby brother.

Welcome, Henry!

Unrelated Facial Expressions on Movie Posters

2007-08-21T08:55:00.000-05:00

This is something odd I've noticed about movie posters now for years. You ever notice? They'll show the actors in the movie, and the actors will all be standing there with odd expressions on their faces. Some of them perhaps rather extreme expressions, as if they're mugging or grimacing.

And all the facial expressions are completely unrelated to one another. There is no interplay of body language or expression among the actors. It's as though each actor is isolated and coccooned off in his or her own little disjoint bubble of space-time.

As though the actors are not really present to one another.

It's not only movies, either. I first noticed this practice in ads for upcoming TV episodes in the pages of TV Guide, way back 30 or 35 years ago. We're talking 1970s. The same deal, odd facial expressions, and all unrelated to one another.

What, is this some sort of longstanding custom or practice in Hollywood? What's the point of it all? I don't get it.

Rid O' Jerk

2007-08-20T07:26:00.001-05:00

Rrrrrriinnnngggggg!! Rrrrrrrinnnggggggggg!!!

The phone jolted Jack awake at... he glanced at the big bright red numerals on the clock 7:18 AM. Who in the world could be calling him at this hour of the morning? And on his day off, yet??!

Rrrrrrrinnnggggggggg!!!

Jack reached over to the nightstand, picked up the phone. He struggled to shake off the cobwebs of sleep as he said, "Hello?"

An angry voice bellowed at him from the receiver: "Taylor, what the hell are you up to? You're late for work again!"

"Sorry," said Jack, "you've got the wrong number." Taylor?! Who in the world is Taylor?

"Taylor!!!" The voice barked like a drill sergeant. "Don't you play games with me! You were supposed to be in to work by seven this morning! That's the second time this month!"

"I'm sorry," said Jack, "but you've got the wrong number. I don't know any Taylor, and at any rate this is my day off."

"Don't give me excuses like that!," shouted the voice. "I'm your boss, and you're going to be in here by no later than quarter to eight, or YOU'RE FIRED!!!"

"Look," said Jack, "I have no idea who you are, what outfit you're representing, or who this Taylor is..."

"RRRRRAAAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!" The voice howled like an enraged wild animal over the phone. "TAYLOR!!! Now you listen... you just shut up... you obey me... you come in to work... you lazy, shiftless, worthless—"

"All right," said Jack, "I've had more than enough of this." Careful to hold the receiver far away from his ear, Jack reached over and pressed the bright red Rid O' Jerk™ button on his phone.

Even at arm's length, the sound of the explosion on the other end of the line was almost deafening. KABLLLLAAMMMMM!!! The sound of the explosion, as the jerk boss's head detonated and blew up like a bomb.

Now there was silence over phone. Silence, until several seconds later came a piercing shriek. No doubt a worker walking into the jerk boss's office, and finding the headless body sitting there. Finding blood and bits of brain and skull fragments sprayed all over the room. That's one worthless jerk of a boss who will never harrass or abuse anyone again. Never again wake a complete stranger out of a sound sleep early in the morning on his day off.

Jack hung up the phone and settled back down to drift off to sleep again.

Rid O' Jerk™... guaranteed to work on any jerk! Guaranteed to work on jerks and jerks alone! Available in regular and anti-telemarketing models. Rid O' Jerk™... it sure works!

The Latest on StupidISP.com

2007-08-20T07:24:00.000-05:00

Well, so after a summer of slower-than-dialup DSL service, my small local mom 'n pop Internet Service Provider, StupidISP.com, finally restored my connection to normal less than a week before I left on vacation. And (I think not coincidentally) just a few days after I called yet again to complain to them. Said connection worked beautifully for about three and a half days, then reverted to problem-ridden molasses connection, just a couple of days before I left on two and a half weeks of vacation.

I returned from vacation last Wednesday, still a molasses connection. Ah, but this time I have with me a second computer, brought back from vacation, and running under Windows XP! No longer can StupidISP.com shuffle me off on the grounds that my main computer uses Linux, and "we don't support Linux."

Busy those first few days back from vacation. Then, over the noon hour Friday, DSL connection mysteriously returned to normal again. Remained normal, over either of my computers, for the rest of Friday.

Saturday the connection was all over the map, sometimes good, sometimes so-so, sometimes slow as molasses. Though always the same on both computers, exploding StupidISP.com's beloved excuse that "Maybe it's something on your computer."

Sunday morning about 7:30 AM, my DSL connection cut out completely. No connection at all. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Talked with some neighbors, they were experiencing the same outage. Still out Sunday noon. I gave up on it until this morning, when now I find service restored, with a pretty good connection. Good connection over either computer, of course.

If we continue to have further problems, I'm going to phone StupidISP.com. This time armed with my new ace in the hole, a computer that has Windows on it, so that they've got to give me customer support.

Give me customer support and get this problem fixed, or else. As in, or else satellite Internet, here I come!

59° Fondly Fahrenheit

2007-08-17T06:41:00.000-05:00

Amazing. After a summer which has generally been hotter than usual, the temperature this morning is 59°. With a forecast of "highs in the upper 70s."

Seems to me at some point several months ago, we took a jump from "highs in the 50s" to "highs in the upper 80s." And it's been mostly "highs in the upper 80s" and "highs in the 90s" ever since. Now if only we can avoid frost warnings before Labor Day. ;-)

As a native of the Midwest, as one who has spent most of his life in this part of the country... look, most things about the Midwest, I love. But the climate here does leave something to be desired. Scorching summers, deep freeze winters, and not much in between. Global warming, a new Ice Age, move to the Midwest and you can enjoy both of them every year.

Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery Blanket

2007-08-16T06:52:00.000-05:00

I got home from vacation late yesterday afternoon, and here at last is a picture of that wool blanket I ordered and received while on vacation.

See, while I was over in Wisconsin at my folks' place on vacation, my mom got a catalog in the mail, no idea how she got on their mailing list. Some Monticello catalog, everything having to do with Thomas Jefferson. That of course includes the Lewis & Clark expedition, and they had in the catalog several Lewis & Clark items, including this 100% wool blanket.

Well, I'd been looking for a new blanket for the wicker sofa in my living room— when I just flop out and crash there, don't you know— the blanket I've had on the sofa is some old ratty threadbare army blanket. When I saw this Lewis & Clark blanket, I knew it was just what I'd been looking for. The catalog said it was made by Pendleton, so I went online, found it even cheaper at the Pendleton website, and ordered it over my folks' computer. Several days later UPS delivered it, and I got to test drive that blanket, so to speak, the final week of vacation.

Very handsome and yet at the same time a marvel of simplicity. Heavy wool blanket. Off-white, says Pendleton; I'd say more like a light tan, or perhaps "camel" is the color-name I'm reaching for. Indigo stripe on each end of the blanket. Three "points" on one edge of the blanket, indicating size and trade value. Edges rough and unfinished, as was customary on blankets in those days. This is the kind of blanket which was widely sold and traded in North America by the Hudson's Bay Company and other outfits.

And you know me, I have a thing about wool blankets and all things woolen. There's something about wool which is honest, simple, natural, organic. Wool is just hippy-dippy back-to-nature. I use wool blankets even in the summertime.

Lunch with Richmond

2007-08-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

This noon I got together and had lunch with Richmond, of One for the Road. I've been reading her blog for ages, and she's been reading my blog for ages, and when she read that I was on vacation over in this neck of the woods, she said, "Hey, why don't we get together for lunch while you're over here on vacation?"

So we shot plans back and forth by email, and this forenoon I took off for somewhere in the environs of East Towne— only had to stop once, at a convenience store, to buy a Madison city street map!— and lo and behold, we met at the restaurant at half past noon, and ate and visited together for over an hour and a half.

And Richmond turned out to be every bit as delightful and funny and crazy in person as she is on her blog. It really was a privilege to meet her at last!

We visited. And we talked. Till long after the usual lunch crowd had finished up and cleared out. We talked about riding horses— Richmond and her family had been horse riding that morning. Horses, and life amidst the bluffs and hollows of northeastern Iowa, and the joys and challenges of the house that Richmond and WxMan and their girls Sporta and Computa are moving into— this led to my life history of moving 25 times in my first 25 years out of high school, followed by eight years now in my present locale. And on to antique hunting, and slide rules, and books, and Foxfire 5 which is the only one of the Foxfire books I'm missing now. And St. John's Church Council and Mt. Hope Session and Episcopal Vestry, and Richmond being editor of her church's newsletter and also now being on the search committee for a new priest. And doings in our respective families. And the craziness of city driving. And politics, and the dullness of the current presidential race, and the polarization of the country. And Karl Rove's resignation. And the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. And the space shuttle. And Japanese Chess otherwise known as Shogi, and how I latched onto that board. And how Richmond will be catering for two events coming up this weekend. And how amazing the blogosphere is in the way it brings people together in defiance of the ordinary barriers of space and time.

Yeah. That really is one thing that impresses me more and more about the blogosphere, and the Internet in general, the longer I hang around. The ways people can network nowadays, in defiance of space and time, like nobody would ever have imagined 40, 30, even 20 years ago.

Thus two bloggers who have long read each other in the cyber-environs of the blogosphere can end up meeting for lunch. To quote a line from my favorite Japanese anime series, "So, Shinji Ikari, we meet at last!"

Vacation Asleep

2007-08-11T16:07:00.001-05:00

Now we come to the part of vacation where once again, as at the beginning, I just lie around and sleep most of the day.

You Won't Find These Action Figures Anywhere

2007-08-11T16:04:00.000-05:00

DR. GOODBYE AND VIRTUAL PARKER FOREVER

Villainous Dr. Goodbye in his shocking pink leisure suit, about to hold the Moon for ransom, from the James Bond movie Doctor Good-Bye starring Keanu Reeves as James Bond Agent 007™. And lovely but villainous sidekick Virtual Parker Forever, ready to abscond with the ill-gotten winnings from the nuclear lottery in her cadmium-lined purse— but can she survive betrayal by her computerized alter ego Virtual Parker Forever 2.0?

Fully jointed and poseable action figures, about 12" tall. Relive the thrill of the rogue lunar module flying across the vast enclosed empty spaces of the space dock. Can Agent 007™ survive explosive decompression in the hard vacuum of outer space? Keanu Reeves James Bond Agent 007™ action figure sold separately.

Slide Rules, Peach Pie, and Up North

2007-08-10T07:36:00.000-05:00

Mr. UPS Man arrived Wednesday afternoon with that wool blanket I ordered, more on that when I get back over to Iowa, including a picture— somehow I didn't think to bring my camera with me on vacation.

Then over to visit my friends David and Mary, and we spent a pleasant Wednesday evening together. David and I are both slide rule collectors, and he was showing me some of his latest finds. We had supper out on the back deck, chicken wings, vegetable pizza, salad with blueberries and raspberries, organic tea, and amazing peach pie.

A hummingbird flitted around us as we discussed the growth of Chinese industry, problems in today's Catholic church, the difficulty of putting yourself back into the mindset of earlier historical settings, the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, water in basements in Seattle and elsewhere, the liabilities of Cartesian philosophy with its illusions of universal control and its lack of a place for the knowing subject, the ways philosophical positions have worked themselves unbeknownst into popular culture, shopping online, Google, Linux, the kabbalah and premodern views of magic, family get-togethers, Carl Jung, the historical prevalence of warfare and mass slaughter, do-it-yourself projects, working third shift, ethanol, and the rise in housing prices.

Then yesterday it was up into central Wisconsin, me and my folks with me behind the wheel, up to visit my grandmother, who is 102 and still just as clear in the head as you or me. We visited for a while, my grandmother was remarking on my resemblance to her father, which (I've seen photos of my great-grandfather) truly is amazing. Talk about various old relatives and how they were related, what I've been doing on vacation, the horrors of Hillary, our Lions Club and its various projects including the big Fourth of July event, my new wool blanket, and various other doings of late. Then back and stopping off in Westfield along the way.

Slept last night beneath my new wool blanket, now I'm up this morning and will be heading out and around today with my folks and my brother. So vacation proceeds apace. I'm finding I'm much more active this vacation than I've been on many vacations in years past.

Golf Clubs and Chimichangas

2007-08-08T09:07:00.000-05:00

So that computer I needed... my brother came up with a computer, minus the monitor. And my friend Greg came up with a flatscreen monitor off a fellow who owed him a favor. So yesterday afternoon I headed back down to Greg's warehouse, where we got the computer with monitor up and running (along with some extra RAM that Greg had lying around), and hooked up to Greg's network along with his other computers.

And I sat there the afternoon, installing endless Windows updates. Also installing anti-virus updates, Internet Explorer 7, newer versions of Sun Java, Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Windows Media Player, and whatnot. Scanning the hard drive for viruses. Defragmenting the hard drive.

After watching YouTube videos of Iron Chef and some Japanese dude playing Shogi to lose, Greg and I headed out to some golf shop across town. Greg is getting into golf, he got some clubs and other items. Then over to Best Buy for a few items; I got 300 on DVD for myself, and A Scanner Darkly on DVD for Greg, seeing as he wouldn't take any money for the monitor. After that it was back through a dizzying web of roads and shopping centers to a Mexican restaurant, where we had a late supper of chimichangas, plus the obligatory (in this hot summer weather) iced tea.

Out after that to Woodman's. Greg worked there at one time, and he was explaining to me the order in which items were restocked in the produce department. Then back to the warehouse, where I tinkered a bit further with the computer before loading it into my Jeep, and then back to my folks' place.

And I slept hardly a wink last night, and the wool blanket and other items are due to arrive by UPS today, and I have yet another social engagement this evening. In the meanwhile, I'm just sitting around resting. May take a nap this morning. This is, after all, vacation time.

Ball Games That Never Were

2007-08-05T10:15:00.000-05:00

The first game started coming to me when I was ten or twelve. I would see dim glimpses of it in my mind's eye as I was drifting off to sleep at night. Brief glimpses of a game played on a long narrow grassy field, played with a ball somewhat larger than a soccer ball.

Played on a field with three or four large posts, like telephone poles, running down the center of the field from one goal to the other. In some views, these "trees" or poles were actual trees. Three or four of them down the center of the field. Then two or three poles somewhere on the left half of the field, and two or three on the right half.

Treeball. Poleball. Trébol. Players running, kicking the ball. The ball ricocheting off the poles. It was a foul for a player to touch a pole, or knock another player into a pole. But sending the ball caroming off a pole was an important part of the game. And sometimes a player would even take the ball in his hands, and throw it so it bounced off a pole.

For many years the rules were not at all clear to me, I would get only glimpses of the game. A playing field studded with poles like an obstacle course. Viewed in sudden glimpses when I was halfway asleep.

The second game started coming to me in my early twenties. A ballpark in New England, in the America of some alternate history. A ball diamond, or rather, not a diamond but a hexagon. Not four bases but six. First, second, third, fourth, fifth, and home. And sometimes there were other bases further out, into the outfield, beyond first or third or fifth base.

Glimpses in my mind as I was drifting off to sleep, unclear how the game worked. Pitcher throwing the ball underhand. Batsman with a flat bat like a boat's oar, like a cricketer. Hitting the ball as in baseball, as in cricket. Then running the bases. More than one way to run the bases. Running to any of the other bases in the hexagon and then back home again, that was the simplest way to score. Higher scores for running triangular patterns, home to second to fourth to home. Or for running out in a straight line to bases in the outfield, running out to third base and then to "further third" base, back down to third and home. Or running around the hexagon, all six bases.

Often there were half a dozen men or more on base. Each running his own intricate pattern. Men with mutton chop whiskers, flat-topped caps like ball players from 1900.

And other odd touches. Pitcher throwing a player out by knocking wooden bits off posts behind home plate. Bonus points scored by hitting the ball through wire wickets in the outfield. Fugitive glimpses in the dark of night, there was more to this ball game than I could fathom.

Lately it's been a third game flitting through my mind's eye as I'm halfway asleep. A game played on a vast flat field, in the frozen lands of the Great White North. Men in heavy suits, some of them wearing big padded gloves running up their forearms like gauntlets. Others carrying big rackets strung with sinew, like snowshoes. Well over a dozen men on each team.

Running on the field, chasing the ball. And the ball is a dark crimson leather ball, near large as a softball, with a long knotted tail streaming out behind it, a tail with feathers on it. Ball flies through the air, a man will catch it in his gauntlet, run with it, throw it. Or swing it by its tail and send it flying. A man will catch the ball in his racket, whirl around and send it through the air, or run with it balancing on the racket. The ball is dead if it touches the ground, then referee throwing it aloft, players rushing in with rackets or gauntlets as if in a scrimmage.

Goal the netted goal cage, ball streaks in, goalie let it through, the crowd goes wild! This is the game that was played in Winnipeg, in Medicine Hat, in Moose Jaw, back in 1922. People coming to see the game, riding in two-wheeled wooden oxcarts, over rutted dirt roads frozen hard. And down south of the border, in Mandan, North Dakota, and in Miles City and Bozeman, Montana. The Polar League versus the Plains League. Spectators on splintery bleachers shivering beneath Hudson's Bay point blankets at the North American championship match, held in Regina. Announcers barking over the loudspeaker in English, in French, in Gaelic, in Michif.

Dark blood-red ball flying through the air with its feathered tail streaming behind, like a little comet. Still not clear just what the rules are. I see it in brief snatches and glimpses, more than half asleep, in the watches of the night.

Orange Chicken, Paladin, and Pat McCurdy

2007-08-04T12:49:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I finally got together with my friend Greg. Drove across Madison to his warehouse, and only ran into road construction once, and that not where I'd been expecting it.

Greg was finishing out a not too busy day of orders, and afterwards one of his workers produced a dice game called Piccolomino, or Pickomino, or something like that. Dice, only with worms in place of the sixes, and rolling to win tiles with numbers on one end, and one or more worms on the other end, whoever ends up with the most worms on tiles wins. A cool game, inasmuch as I grasped it.

After that on this lazy Friday Greg and I headed into Madison and ended up eating supper at a Chinese restaurant on Regent Street. We got orange chicken and pepper steak, very good, especially the orange chicken, which was rather hot. I also downed two large glasses of iced tea.

Afterwards back to the warehouse, where we farted around watching conspiracy videos on YouTube. General Smedley Butler, habeas corpus, Skull and Bones; but where was Jekyll Island?

Then back into Madison, downtown, and we parked in the Kirsopp Lake Memorial parking ramp, just off State Street. (Well, okay, actually the Lake Street parking ramp, but that's what I've always called it.) Wandered around on the State Street Mall, which had been taking over by some street preacher with gigantic loudspeakers, his flunkies all wearing identical T-shirts, and he was telling some long rambling and interminable story about the time his son broke his favorite picture; immediate point of the story not evident.

After a while Greg's friend Lorene showed up, and the three of us hit a bar called the Blue Velvet, not far off State Street. I think this is the bar that used to be called Jocko's Rocket Ship, which I always assiduously avoided in my student days for reasons which will be evident just from the sound of its name; but the Blue Velvet is now much more like a Blue Velvet, and known chiefly for its martinis. Also lots of blue lighting inside. And we got there early, when the place was almost empty.

I got some lemon & lime martini, and we got off into who had starred as Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel, and after a while Greg remembered it was Richard Boone. This one bartender who had been over at our table talking with us checked it out for us by googling on his iPhone. Sure enough, it was Richard Boone. Then we got off into how the bartender had gotten his iPhone on a visit to New York City, and he declined to stand in line endlessly but just walked into the store the next day instead, and sure enough, everyone had said they'll all be bought out, but there was one iPhone left, and he bought it.

Then back down State Street, by this time the street preacher had decamped from the State Street Mall, and over to Memorial Union on the shores of Lake Mendota, where Pat McCurdy was performing outdoors to a packed crowd. Pat McCurdy is a Wisconsin institution, and if you've never heard what country music as sung by Jamaicans sounds like, you don't know what you're missing. After a while we drifted indoors, into Memorial Union, in search of restrooms, and then in search of Coke or cheese curds or somesuch. Back out to listen to Pat a while longer, and by that time we were about ready to call it a night.

I got in something past midnight, and slept soundly the rest of the night. Greg and I will be going and looking Tuesday to see if we can't get me a cheap second computer (I think this has to do with UW surplus), long as it has Windows XP on it and is able to go online, and mainly dirt cheap, which ought to force StupidISP.com's hand in their disinclination to help me with my recurrent DSL problems as they'll no longer have the excuse of "Oh, Linux, we won't touch that with a ten foot pole"; and then either they'll have to fix things, or I can cut free and go with satellite Internet.

Carbon Footprint and Chinese Restaurant

2007-08-02T17:15:00.000-05:00

So yesterday morning I went out and hit a used bookstore in Madison, came away with a few books including one interesting old book on the endgame in Checkers. Funniest part of visiting this bookstore was, the owner asked one of his flunkies to turn down the air conditioning another few degrees, and she said, "Oh, I really don't like increasing our carbon footprint."

With a straight face. Only in Madison, the Berkeley of the Midwest!

Then I visited an antique mall in the same shopping center. I've been visiting this antique mall for probably going on 20 years now, it's had its ups and downs. They seem to be on the upswing at the moment, though I didn't find anything that really tempted me. Still, a pleasant place to spend a quiet hour.

By now it was getting on toward noon, and I'd been vaguely thinking of going to a Chinese restaurant. Well, you know, there is a Chinese restaurant right next door to the antique mall, noticed it all these years though never ate there. So I stopped in— gigantic place inside, very Chinese in its decor— and had their buffet for lunch. Good food, may stop by there again while I'm on vacation.

Back to my folks' place, spent the afternoon reading through that Checkers book.

I've been thinking of getting a wool throw for my wicker sofa downstairs. Yes, wool, you know me and wool. My mom got a catalog in the mail, in it I found just what I was looking for. Went online, found it on another site (Pendleton) for cheaper than in the catalog, ordered it online. It will be shipped here and hopefully arrive while I'm still on vacation.

Slept soundly last night. Then got up this morning and had a migraine. One of my famous migraines. It's passed over now, but I've spent most of today flat on my back in bed, and had to postpone till tomorrow a visit I'd planned with a friend today.

Chrome City, and Other Vacational Oddments

2007-08-01T06:31:00.000-05:00

So here I am on vacation in Madison, Wisconsin, and it's a bright sunny summer day, and I'm driving around Madison, and I notice what I don't often notice living on a gravel road way out in the countryside. Namely, all the chrome on motor vehicles in traffic. Chrome bumpers, chrome trim, chrome whatever.

And it's like photic arrows right in my eyes. Stabbing, bright, sharp. I know, chrome is bright, chrome is decorative. But where did the idea ever arise to decorate motor vehicles with all this mirror-shiny chrome that reflects the sun, blinding bright, right into your eyes as you're driving in traffic?

I'm just wondering.

Speaking of vacationing in the city, and continuing on my curmudgeonly trajectory, ahem, I was tooling around with my folks in my Jeep, and we stopped at a McDonald's, and at the drive-through (or is that "drive-thru"?) I ordered three large vanilla shakes. I spoke clearly and distinctly into the grille: "three large vanilla shakes."

After we got home, we discovered that they had given us three large chocolate shakes. Not vanilla, but chocolate.

This being the city, and this being McDonald's, somehow I'm not surprised.

Oh well. Chocolate shakes, not gonna drive 10 or 12 blocks back there, I'll survive. :-) But still. What part of "vanilla" didn't they understand?!

On the more upward side of things, I've been catching up on my sleep, as is my wont these first few days of vacation. Sleeping like a log day and night.

We also hit a restaurant out on Cottage Grove Road, American Dairyland, or American Dairyland Family Table Restaurant, or somesuch. As usual, my appetites do not range far afield from a hamburger and fries.

I brought my Shogi materials with me, and have been playing through a championship game from 1938 or thereabouts.

And I've been hanging out with family. Don't get to do nearly enough of that, living over in Iowa.

May go out and hit a used bookstore today. Or not. We shall see. This is vacation.

Vakantsiya

2007-07-29T11:45:00.001-05:00

Well, early tomorrow morning I'll be heading out on vacation. Which I'd lay good odds is vakantsiya in some language or other, no idea which; or if it isn't, it ought to be.

The usual drill for my vacations obtains: I may have Internet access on the other end; and if so, I may blog thencefrom. Or then again, I may divert myself with non-computer-related pastimes.

The Courier Game

2007-07-27T06:17:00.000-05:00

The Courier Game (das Kurierspiel) is a German chess variation which originated in the early 13th century and continued as a popular game for several hundred years. In the mid 1700s it was still being played in the village of Ströbeck, though by 1825 visitors there found it extinct. You'll also see the Courier Game referred to as "Courier Chess."

The game is played on an 8x12 board, with 24 pieces on each side. Each player has a white square in his right-hand corner. Most sources put the king on a square of its own color, the opposite of modern Chess. White's pieces, moving along the back row from left to right, are the rook, knight, bishop, courier, counsellor, king, queen, fool, courier, bishop, knight, and rook.

The rook has the same move as the modern rook, any number of spaces straight on an open rank or file.

The knight has the same move as the modern knight, one space straight and one space diagonal, leaping over any intervening piece.

Next comes the bishop, which has the old medieval bishop's move: two spaces diagonally, neither more nor less, and (like the knight) leaping over any intervening piece. You'll notice, I use a different piece, not a bishop, to represent the bishop in the Courier Game.

This is because the piece that comes next, the courier, moves exactly like our modern bishop, any number of spaces diagonally along an open diagonal. Hence the piece I use to represent the courier is a bishop. Historically speaking, the courier was the first piece to have the unlimited diagonal move of today's bishop.

Next in from the courier come two other new pieces. The mann or counsellor— that biggish piece next to the king— moves just like the king, one space in any direction, only it is a fighting piece: it can be captured like any other piece, and unlike the king it is not subject to check. The schleich or fool— the small rook next to the queen— moves like a rook, but only one space at a time: one space forwards, backwards, or sideways.

Finally we have the king, which moves like our modern king, one space in any direction. And the queen moves like the old medieval queen, one space diagonally.

The pawns move one space straight forward, and capture one space diagonally forward. They can't move two spaces on their first move (partial exception in a moment), and thus there is no capturing a pawn en passant.

In the Courier Game the standard opening is for each player to advance his queen's pawn and rook's pawns two spaces, and his queen to queen three. After these initial four exceptional moves, the game proceeds with pieces moving normally.

There is no castling. Of course, the object of the game is to put the other player's king in checkmate. The rule for stalemate in the Courier Game is unknown; until the 19th century the status of stalemate varied considerably in Chess.

The rule for pawn promotion is also unknown: on reaching the eighth rank, the pawn could perhaps have been promoted to the relatively weak queen, as in medieval Chess. Or, as H.J.R. Murray has suggested, perhaps pawn promotion followed the complicated rules of another Chess variation played in Ströbeck: on reaching the eighth square, the pawn had to make three "joyleaps" backward to the 6th, 4th, and 2nd squares to be promoted to queen. These joyleaps did not have to occur on consecutive turns, and the pawn could not capture, or leap over pieces, while moving backwards. While on the 8th square the pawn was immune from capture.

Back in the old days it was held that the courier was the most powerful piece in the game, though actually the rook must have been stronger.

I made my set for the Courier Game in high school back in the early 70s, when I turned out sets for a number of Chess variations as an art project. The board is red suede leather, with the black squares drawn on in India ink. The pieces were cannibalized from several sets of chessmen.

The Courier Game is slow compared to modern Chess, but nonetheless it's quite playable.

An Eleventh Hour Reprieve for StupidISP.com

2007-07-25T12:03:00.001-05:00

Well. I've blogged often enough before about my small local mom n' pop Internet Service Provider, StupidISP.com, and the many, many problems, slowdowns, and outages that have attended their "service" over the years. Most recently, I've suffered six and a half weeks of unholy molasseslike DSL "service": an agonizing initial delay, usually about 16 seconds, before any website will even begin to load; then an initial small burst, followed by more delays with further small bursts every 10, 15, 20 seconds, until after a minute or more a small, simple webpage might finally be fully or mostly loaded.

A minute or more. And that's when I wasn't simply getting those frequent error messages, "domain name google.com could not be resolved," etc.

Can you imagine what it's like to have DSL, and have to sit there and twiddle your thumbs for more than 15 seconds before any site will even begin to load? For more than a minute before the site is more or less finished loading? Assuming the site can be found at all?

This, uh, technical difficulty started June 7, and if I hadn't been so damn busy in June and early July, I would've reported it sooner. Yes, I did the usual stunt of unplugging router and modem, waiting, plugging them back in again— no effect. Finally on July 9 I phoned StupidISP.com's customer service. They said they'd put in a service request, but after a week and a half no word from them, and no improvement in DSL "service," I phoned again on July 20, they were like, "Oh, you've got Linux on your computer, we don't do Linux, are you sure the problem isn't in your computer?" (No, all the many times over the years I've phoned them, the problem has never turned out to be "in my computer": though they keep making this assumption every time, I suspect because it lets them off the hook, harrumph!)

That afternoon, mirabile dictu, an employee from StupidISP.com who actually understands Linux phoned me back, and he was very genuinely helpful. Problem was not fixed, though he reinforced my growing impression that it had to do with difficulties and/or errors in DNS resolution. I was going to look into possible ways of circumventing the problem from my end when I had the time, which I haven't had these past few days.

I must admit, over the weekend I was seriously entertaining thoughts of switching over to satellite Internet, which is available through our local rural electric coop, and which is the only alternative to StupidISP.com in these parts. It'd be more expensive, though not as much more expensive as I'd originally thought; but worth it to me, if it led to a functioning and fairly reliable Internet connection.

Because, you see, this latest six and a half week molasses slowdown is only the latest in a long series of problems. We had an identical slowdown out here— not only me, but some neighbors— which ran for nearly a month last November and December. And many a similar slowdown for a day or five between now and then. I could write a book about all the many service slowdowns and disruptions I've experienced with StupidISP.com over the years, up to and including the time their system hiccupped, and lost all their customers' email addresses and passwords, which then had to be manually reentered over the course of a day or two, because they apparently had no electronic-media backup listing of their customers' email accounts...

Well. Anyhow. Yesterday morning at exactly 10:30 AM, my DSL connection suddenly returned to normal. Just like that. For the first time in going on seven weeks. I didn't do anything on my end, I assume it must've been StupidISP.com fiddling with something out there. I had a beautiful, lightning fast connection for the rest of the day yesterday.

Then I got up this morning, and it was back to molasses again. Not quite as bad as it's been, but bad enough. Until around 8:40 this morning, when it returned once again to a functioning, lightning fast connection, as it has remained the rest of this morning.

So I guess StupidISP.com has won an eleventh hour reprieve. For now. I don't see why they can't keep their Intertubes running smoothly. This problem, with all the same identical symptoms, keeps recurring out here over and over and over again. And no, the problem is not in my computer: the only correlation I can trace, each time, is that every time I have this problem, it spontaneously and magically disappears a couple of business days after the second time I phone a complaint to them, first-time reports evidently not being taken seriously.

Though if this problem recurs (as it predictably will some weeks or months down the road) I am seriously going to consider ditching StupidISP.com, and switching over to satellite Internet.

Harry Potter Who?

2007-07-24T07:27:00.001-05:00

I've been getting a lot of visitors lately who are googling for "harry potter magic wand" or the like. No doubt they're stumbling onto the picture of my magic wand which I've posted a couple of times. Not too Potterish a wand, though I like it even better myself, and you can get one just like it at Whirlwood Magic Wands.

I suppose I'm getting these visitors due to the recent surge in Pottermania. I must confess I haven't seen the latest Harry Potter movie yet. I saw the first few movies and liked them, but I'm usually not one to rush out and see movies while they're in the theater. Maybe I'll borrow it from someone when it comes out on DVD.

And I must be one of the few people around who has not yet stormed the bookstores to buy and immediately read the latest, and last, Harry Potter book. I dunno, I've got the first several books of the series, and except for a bit of browsing in the first volume, somehow despite my best intentions I've just never gotten around to reading them. I don't know why not, I suspect I'd enjoy them. Maybe when it comes out in paperback. We'll see.

Could it be? Am I the only person around who has not yet succumbed to Pottermania?

Which Dwell in the Ravine

2007-07-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

Jeff drove his pickup across rolling open land, purple mountains in the distance. The blue sky of western Colorado in August stretched overhead. In the rearview mirror Jeff saw clouds of dust billowing out behind the Ford F-150. A hot, dry day. Rain last week, could use some more. All across the family ranch it was dry like this. Could use some more rain.

Now up ahead Jeff saw his destination. The ravine. Jeff stopped his pickup, killed the ignition. He got out, put on his backpack, slung a coil of rope over his shoulder. He would walk the last half mile to the ravine.

Jeff had been meaning all summer to get out here to the ravine. Now came at last a quiet day when he could get away. The ravine, as part of the ranch, had been in the family since the late 1800s. Jeff remembered when he was a young man, and his father had shown him the ravine for the first time. One of these times in the next few years Jeff would have to bring his sons out here to the ravine.

But not until they were old enough to understand, old enough to keep a secret, old enough to understand a sacred trust. The ravine must always be guarded. The ravine must always be kept safe. The ravine was the reason why the ranch must always remain in the family in perpetuity.

As Jeff reached the ravine, he uncoiled the rope from his shoulder. He looked around at the Gambell oaks, the cedars, the junipers which flanked the edge of the ravine. Never had Jeff known a ravine which was so difficult of access. No way in, no way down, except to descend the sheer rock wall. Jeff ran the rope around the trunk of a sturdy oak, fastened the strong metal clip. He tested the rope with his full body weight. Good. Now Jeff ran the rope out, down, down, down, into the ravine. All the way down. Then he clipped himself to the rope and put on heavy work gloves.

Jeff climbed slowly, carefully, down the rock wall and into the ravine. Down out of bright sunlight and into the shade. Careful, there were slick spots, overgrown with moss. Other places, here and there, Jeff could see the handholds and footholds cut into the rock by Indians, hundreds of years ago. Carefully, slowly, Jeff descended until he reached the bottom of the ravine.

Jeff unclipped himself from the rope, then sat and rested on the flat top of a large boulder, as his eyes adjusted to the deep shade here at the bottom of the ravine. Deep shade: for a few hours at midday the sun might shine down in here, but most of the day the ravine was cloaked in obscurity. And cool, no heat of summer down here. Nor did it get very cold in the winter: the hot springs down here kept it moderate even in January. And humid year round.

Jeff looked around in the shade. Most of the trees down here in the ravine were not the trees that flourished in the world above. Most of the trees down here, far as Jeff could tell, were ginkgo. Ginkgo trees, or something very like. Odd, ginkgo trees over in China were referred to as "fossil trees." Ginkgos grew down here. And other vegetation, including ferns. Lots and lots of ferns grew in the moist, moderate temperatures which prevailed down here in the deep shade.

Ginkgo, "fossil trees." The world down here in the ravine was a world out of time, a fossil world, a world where little had changed in millions of years.

Now, the creatures. Where were the creatures? Jeff looked around, his eyes adjusted to the dimness. He looked... yes, right over there. Over by that ginkgo. Over there, browsing, grazing, eating ferns and other plants...

Jeff always felt a tingle go up his spine when he saw the creatures. There were two, three young ones, and a full-grown adult. The young were the size of watermelons, the adult was the size of a large washtub. Jeff watched the full-grown creature as it grazed, its broad back studded with knobs and plates of bone, full body armor. Bone spikes fringed the sides of the creature's body. Its broad horned head, wider than it was long, was also covered with knobbed bone armor. And behind it the creature's armored tail, with a heavy bone club on the end.

The creature moved on short, squat legs as it fed. The little ones followed and grazed alongside; they had probably hatched in the spring. These creatures had nothing to fear. There was no way for any animal to get down into this ravine, or back up out again. And any animal that did somehow get down here... it could never pierce the creature's armor, and it would do well to stay clear of that massive bone club on the creature's tail. Coyote, mountain lion, even bear... that bone club on the creature's tail would be the end of them.

Jeff shuddered at the sight of the creatures, placidly grazing in their heavy bone armor. Then a deep feeling of peace came over him. Jeff seldom felt so whole, so alive, as when he was out here in the ravine. Out here in the ravine with these creatures. Jeff had read books. He had seen pictures, artist's renderings, of the ancient dinosaurs, of Ankylosaurus. These creatures... they must be some kind of small ankylosaur. Jeff didn't know. Some kind of small ankylosaur which had survived beyond its time, for many millions of years, down here in the mild world of the ravine, isolated and cut off from the world above.

Small ankylosaurs. Ginkgo trees. And there were other creatures down here too, such as the little blue-green scavenger reptiles, not six inches high, which ran upright on their hind legs and fed on carrion. The ravine was a world unto itself.

Indian footholds cut into the rock walls... It was from the Indians, back in the late 1800s, that Jeff's great-great-grandfather had first learned of this place. The Indians used to come here too. They would leave packages of tobacco as offerings, atop this very boulder. The Indians had not been to the ravine now in almost 100 years. The stories were still handed down in Jeff's family. The name was handed down too, the name by which the Indians had called these armored creatures: tóónohuipé'aúúsh, "those which dwell in the ravine."

And that was why this ravine far out in western Colorado was a sacred trust. Why the ranch must always stay in the family. These creatures must be protected, must be kept a secret from the outside world. If word of them ever got out... first there would be the curiosity seekers, then the hunters in search of a trophy, then the researchers come to gather specimens. Finally would come the idle daytrippers, and the destroyers and the vandals. Graffiti on these hallowed rock walls. Initials carved into the ginkgo trees. Empty pop cans amidst the ferns. The creatures all dead, or in a laboratory, or in a zoo.

The noble tóónohuipé'aúúsh... this must never happen to them! That was why Jeff always kept this ravine a strict secret, as had his forefathers before him.

Jeff sat there silently for several hours, watching the creatures move and feed among the plants. Then he got up, inspected the rope, and readied himself for the climb back up to the outer world.

Three Swans Aflying

2007-07-21T07:09:00.001-05:00

I must be in "finding" mode lately. Ran across this in a second hand shop. Three swans aflying. Bisque. Flying over the waves. And they've found a home, sitting atop a bookcase here in my house.

3V Cola

2007-07-19T08:11:00.000-05:00

Recently at an antique mall I ran across this pop bottle. 3V Cola. Odd, I've never seen that brand before. Various old brands, you'll run across them from time to time here and there in antique joints. But this is the only 3V Cola I've ever seen, and the lady at the cash register said the same.

Yellow on white, repeated three times around the bottle on body and neck: 3V COLA. Also 16 FL.OZ. and FULL PINT. No indication of which bottling company or where. On the bottom of the bottle, stamped into the glass, it reads Duraglass, along with some numbers which may or may not indicate 7/59.

Odd, like a pop bottle out of some strange dream.

The Mall, after a Long Absence

2007-07-17T07:17:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday being my day off, I headed on up to La Crosse. Got a few pairs of jeans at Farm & Fleet. Then I drifted over to the mall.

And it was weird.

Being in the mall, I mean. Because you see I haven't been to the mall in, I don't know, could be a couple of years now. I just don't frequent places like that.

When I first walked into the mall, it was almost physically disorienting to be in this large, enclosed space with all these people walking around. I felt like a tribesman who had been plucked up out of the heart of the Amazon jungle, and set down in the middle of Times Square.

So many people walking around... living way out in the country as I do, I'm just not used to seeing so many people at once, certainly not so many strangers all at once.

And shops and shops and shops and shops... I couldn't even figure out what some of the shops were selling. Stylish and expensive, whatever it was.

Seeing as it was noon, I headed over to the food court. Stood in line to order some Chinese food. I like Chinese food, don't often have an opportunity to get it. Ended up getting fried rice, Mongolian beef, and orange chicken, plus an egg roll and a gigantic glass bottle of green tea "with ginseng" or somesuch funky additives. Huge amount of food, that was my meal for the rest of the day right there.

Wandering around some more. There were some new cars out on display in the mall, Mazda, silver-grey. Looked a lot like my brother's car.

I discovered that somehow in the vast interim since my last visit, Barnes & Noble had set up shop at the mall. Wandered around in Barnes & Noble.

I sometimes wonder who buys, much less reads, all the books that are sitting out in these large chain bookstores. So very many more books published and for sale today than there were 30 or 40 years ago. And today's world is so much less literate, so much less book-oriented, than that world of 30 or 40 years past. Who reads all these books?

For that matter, I was puzzled by how the books I saw on the shelves seemed to be designed according to a different template than I'd expect would appeal to most readers. Just judging the books by their covers, so many of them were so, so postmodern, ironic, cynical, detached, nudge and a wink, dismissive, countercultural, and did I say postmodern? Visual tics in cover design: overuse of cartoons, overuse of Elizabethan women, overuse of goths, overuse of Rachel Ray.

I did find a couple of books by Jack Kerouac that I didn't already have, The Book of Haikus and The Book of Sketches. I guess the Kerouac literary estate is mining their archives for all they're worth, releasing unpublished material in lucrative dribs and drabs 40 years after Kerouac's death. But never let it be said that I passed up a book by or about Kerouac unbought; and The Book of Sketches, in particular, does look worthwhile.

Over to six bookcases of game books. Two whole bookcases full of Poker books; how did that happen?! I mean, when did Poker become that popular? (Oh, that's right, Poker is on TV now.) One bookcase full of Chess books, that I can understand. Eh, a newly published book on Mah Jongg by Tom Sloper, I bought it, I've seen Sloper's posts over on rec.games.mahjong. Then... half a shelf of books on the game of Go, but I've got 'em all already. One book on Chinese Chess, already got it. And not a single book on Shogi alias Japanese Chess: figures.

So I came away from the unfamiliar world of the mall with a solid meal of Chinese food, and three books to add to my library. Weird. I just can't get over how weird a place like the mall seems when you haven't been to the mall in a couple of years. I gotta get out more.

Serving Suggestion

2007-07-16T07:08:00.000-05:00

You notice on food packages often it says "Serving Suggestion." The impression I've always had of this is that on the package they show a picture of the food, and it looks way better than you could ever hope to prepare it in your own kitchen in a thousand years, and so they put this little disclaimer, "Serving Suggestion," on the package as a way of saying, "Hey, if you can't prepare our product to look this good, don't lawsuit us!"

I mean, you buy a frozen pizza, and on the box there's this picture of the pizza, hot from the oven, with about three times as much sausage and pepperoni as it would actually have on it, and of course the anti-lawsuit, anti-whammy inscription, "Serving Suggestion."

Or on a package of taco seasoning, there's a picture of these tacos like nothing anyone this side of a master chef could ever actually prepare. And... "Serving Suggestion." In other words, if your tacos don't turn out looking this good, don't lawsuit us!

I've got a box of pancake mix on my kitchen counter, it shows pancakes with a perfectly squared-off unmelted pat of butter on top, and impossibly unrunny glassine-immobile syrup, "Serving Suggestion," don't sue us if the butter on your pancakes melts and the syrup all gets absorbed and disappears into the pancake!

In fact I got some generic soda crackers the other day, and on the side of the box you'll find these soda crackers (a) with more salt than they actually have on them, and (b) sitting next to a bowl of tomato soup with little bits of parsley sprinkled on top of the soup. Once again, "Serving Suggestion." Never mind that those of us out here in the real world have never in our lives seen tomato soup that had parsley sprinkled on top of it. I mean, it's just unreal!

Those evil food manufacturers! Taunting us with pictures of food prepared as never mortal eyes have seen, knowing that we will be stuck with their actual paltry food items from inside the box, dreary, sparse, uninspired and uninspiring. But hey, say the food companies, don't lawsuit us! The paradisiacal picture on the box is only a "Serving Suggestion"! And thereby the food manufacturers, like a witch doctor muttering his preemptive counter-spell, have covered themselves with a shield of protection against the smiting curse of a lawsuit from those who would cry, "Hey, the pizza doesn't really have that much sausage and pepperoni on it!"; or, "Hey, where's the parsley for the tomato soup?! You didn't supply any parsley, tomato soup not included, now pay us $54 million in an emotional-damages class-action lawsuit, wah-ah-ah-ah-ahhh! Wah-ah-ah-ahhhhh!!"

And let's not even get into the deep, dark, cryptic juju of Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr.

Sound Energy

2007-07-13T07:13:00.001-05:00

Cool albeit cryptic flash video game. My best score is 103, my moving "countdown" circle turned a magenta square orange and that somehow ricocheted to expand the big "combo" circle. Knowledge of Japanese not required. :-)

Update: Fuller explanation of the game:

Click on the left mouse button to change the color of your circle, then collect the corresponding objects on screen to build your combo count. Energy is lost whenever your circle collides with an object that is of a different color.

A combo box appears when you have several combos going. Switching colors when your circles is hovering above any of these boxes will cause a variety of effects, dependent on your current combo count. Grey objects tend to chase after your circle. Blue circles float horizontally and red ones move vertically.

Still Slow

2007-07-13T07:12:00.001-05:00

My DSL connection is still slow as molasses, slower than dialup, all sorts of errors, "google.com could not be resolved." And it's been this way since June 7.

Yes, I've phoned StupidISP.com. They say they'll get on it, though they can't say when.

Degeneration

2007-07-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

Over at CrunchyCon, Rod Dreher writes of

this fantastic Quebecois song called "Degeneration," by a band called Mes Aieux (My Ancestors), articulating a traditionalist/crunchy-con protest against modern emptiness and anomie. It's subtitled in English, so non-Francophones can follow it... I'm told that this song is now one of the most popular in Quebec.

I'd say this song captures some of the liabilities of late modernity to a tee. And over at YouTube, I see one of the commenters has hit an associated nail square on the head:

Suggest to a modernist that his beloved modernity may be in the slightest way unworkable or even less-than-ideal, and he will react with the fury of the most hidebound reactionary, reiterating his tired mantra that "we must look forward, not backward". He doesn't want us to question his plans to fully and completely impose his vision upon the world.

Spot on target. The myrmidons of modernity, the technocrats, and the bureaucrats will tell us to just shut the hell up, get with the program, and enjoy living in the empty, hollowed-out, deracinated modern world their efforts have produced. But some of us refuse to submit. That's one of a number of reasons why I live on a gravel road, far out into the countryside, surrounded by cornfields, and amongst people who still have their heads screwed on straight. I've seen the alternative: I lived amidst it in academia most of my young adult years. Now in my middle age my aim is to do what little I can to help one small and still relatively sane corner of the world stay on an even keel.

From the Cartesian cogito ergo sum onward, modernity has been very, very much a mixed bag. Lots of pluses, lots and lots of minuses. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty about the modern world that I like and appreciate. But at the same time, I've always thought that modern culture is at its core deeply, radically dysfunctional: conducing strongly to the emptiness so aptly expressed in that song. That, however, is a rant for another time.

Wednesday Is the New Saturday

2007-07-11T06:06:00.000-05:00

I heard it on the radio.

The Pork Chekhov

2007-07-11T06:05:00.000-05:00

So I keep hearing mention of the Pork Chekhov. And the Beef Chekhov. And the Soybean Chekhov.

Forgive me for being agriculturally ignorant, but what about the Pork Sulu and the Soybean Uhura?

Katsura Komadai for Shogi

2007-07-10T06:20:00.000-05:00

Recently I got a very nice board for the game of Shogi, or Japanese Chess— a big, thick, heavy butcher block of a board, made of Japanese katsura wood, and standing on legs.

Now just yesterday I received in the mail from Japan some more Shogi items, this time two finely made komadai, or small wooden stands, which you will see flanking the board above. The komadai are also made of katsura, and their purpose is to hold captured Shogi pieces. Reason being, when you capture an opponent's piece you can hold it and reenter it as your own on a later turn. This reentry of captured pieces is a major way Shogi differs from Western Chess.

The setup shown is from toward the end of game 2 in the 64th annual Meijin tournament between the defending Meijin, Moriuchi Toshiyuki, and 9-dan challenger Tanigawa Koji, April 25-26, 2006.

Once again, David Hurley of Hirohurl.net was very helpful in obtaining this special custom order for me. If you're looking for quality Shogi items, his site is the place to go.

Update, 9/07: Hirohurl.net is now Japanese Games Shop.

Slide Rule: Post Versalog No. 1460

2007-07-09T07:26:00.000-05:00

(Click on this and all pictures for a complete full-size view of the slide rule)

Selective Luddite™ that I am, I've long been fascinated with slide rules. I often use them in preference to calculators, and I've acquired something of a slide rule collection over the years. One of my favorites is the Post Versalog No. 1460. It has 23 scales— probably my favorites are the R1 and R2 scales, which afford greater precision in working with squares and square roots than an A scale.

I picked up this slide rule for a song in an antique shop in Decorah, Iowa. I just walked into that shop and there it was, in a glass case along with several other slide rules. A beautiful slide rule, celluloid over bamboo. Think it was something like $16 that I paid for it. Only problem was, the Versalog was missing the little cursor glass on the back side.

So I went to Walter Shawlee's Slide Rule Universe, out in British Columbia, and ordered a spare part from them. They just about flipped when I told them how much I'd gotten the slide rule for. I think the cursor glass was $20, more than I'd paid for the slide rule itself. But $16 + $20 = $36 was still a bargain for a slide rule which sells among collectors for $200 or more.

There's a little date code on the edge of my Post Versalog, indicating that it was manufactured in March 1957. Seven months before Sputnik was launched. March 1957. Dag Hammarskjöld was Secretary General of the United Nations. "Butterfly" by Andy Williams was at the top of the singles charts. Elvis had just bought Graceland. The British colonies of the Gold Coast and British Togoland became the independent nation of Ghana. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss was published. President Eisenhower had just begun his second term in office. And I was a squawling baby, nine months old.

Robert A. Heinlein, Born July 7, 1907

2007-07-07T07:26:00.000-05:00

Robert A. Heinlein was born 100 years ago today, July 7, 1907, in Butler, Missouri. He was one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, and even that may be an understatement.

I remember the first Heinlein book I ever read. It was Red Planet. I was in 7th grade, I had checked the book out of the school library, and despite the fact that I had a headache, I lay there all evening on the davenport, reading that book from cover to cover.

I eventually ended up reading almost all of Heinlein's writings, novels, short stories, essays. Well, not all of it: I Will Fear No Evil defeated my best intentions, and there were a few of Heinlein's later novels that I simply skipped. But I've read most of Heinlein: he fills 25 inches of shelf space in my science fiction bookcases.

My favorite Heinlein novel was Citizen of the Galaxy. Thorby, Baslim, the Free Traders: I cannot exaggerate the impact this book had on me, and I suspect I've read it a dozen times over.

Above and beyond that, other favorites would include Have Spacesuit, Will Travel; The Door into Summer; Starship Troopers; and (??!) Farnham's Freehold. These books, and others of Heinlein's, simply became part of my mental furniture. You sit down, you open the book, you read, you reread. When you come to, you find that the afternoon has fled. Heinlein had a way of drawing the reader into the book; I don't know, it's hard to put into words, it resists analysis.

But I've always thought that's the mark of a great writer: they resist easy analysis. I want to say Heinlein is one of my favorite science fiction authors because he knew how to write, and he knew how to tell a story; and that's probably close to the mark. But I think the truth is simpler and more basic than that: for whatever reason, I simply find myself drawn back to Heinlein's writings, again and again and again.

Later Heinlein I sometimes find tedious. But I did like The Number of the Beast. Ditto Friday, and the first half or so of The Cat Who Walks through Walls.

I read some people who tell how Heinlein had a major impact on their own philosophy and worldview. I have to confess that Heinlein's books have had little if any influence on my overall outlook. In fact, often as not I find myself in disagreement with him; though I usually find his thinking intriguing. But I seldom read fiction on the basis of whether I agree or disagree with the author's views.

I will never forget driving along through the countryside, one beautiful sunny day in May of 1988. I had just finished up my first year of graduate studies at Duke University, and somehow a lazy afternoon of drifting from one highway to the next had led me on up out of North Carolina, and into Virginia. My car radio was tuned to I don't know what station, and the news came on at the top of the hour. One of the news items was that science fiction writer Robert Heinlein had died.

Robert A. Heinlein. Born 100 years ago today, July 7, 1907. Died May 8, 1988. He was indeed the Dean of Science Fiction.

Pronounciations

2007-07-05T06:34:00.000-05:00

They used to tell us to say creek, but we always said crick. I hear some people say off-ten; we never said anything but offen. I mean, that's like saying cass-tel for cassel!

Seems I hear a lot of people say melk for milk. And some even say chohldren for children.

And then there are the people (somehow I always think of them as being from Texas) who say heeeee-row for here-oh, and veeeee-hickel for vee'ick'l.

And I recently heard someone say see-antsy for seance.

And let's not get into grammar. How do you explain to a Frenchman, earnest student of English fresh off the jetliner from Paris, that out here in the heartland, it's not we haven't been going, but rather we ain't been goin'.

And please note, out here "been" is pronounced "ben," and neither "bean" (either British or else hoity-toity) nor (never heard it except in a grammar book) "bin."

Fourth of July

2007-07-04T06:51:00.001-05:00

Wishing you a happy Fourth of July!

Here in my neck of the woods we've got more of our big Fourth of July celebration today, winding up with fireworks this evening. Things went well at our celebration yesterday, at least until a sudden downpour forced them to cancel the tractor pull part way through. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative today.