Pilgrim Eye

1:48 PM - Things that make you go mmmmm

I may have asked this before, but why are the bagels sold "pre-sliced"? Says so, right on the package. Why not just "sliced"?

11:19 AM - Top ten things to look forward to

...for when things ease up a bit*:

1. Haircuts more than twice a year.

2. New underwear more than twice a decade.

3. New shoes more than twice a decade.

4. Dinner out. Ever.

5. A vacation trip that isn't also for a funeral, a family crisis, or transporting a child to college.

6. The ability to say yes without qualms to some little impromptu luxury like a Starbucks latte.

7. The ability to offer a bit of money, from time to time, when one of the kids is tight.

8. Maybe own our own home?

...

Apparently money is not that important to me. I can't come up with 10 things.

---

*No idea when this might be. Maybe never.

8:34 PM - Squash aborning

squash Originally uploaded by verbalobe.
Kinda sexual, ain't it?

4:14 PM - Origami at the DMV

The form she hands you
is crisp but not square.
You'll have plenty of time --
bent into a stiff arrow something
like a chair as they call up
first the people who have been here
since yesterday --
to parcel out the bits of you.
The things they don't ask
stay crumpled in hip pockets and
secret wallet compartments
but you're afraid. Your
hieroglyph is called, you're
in the spotlight now, blushing.

Hideo shuffles your papers
like a collapsed mobile, and
everything is exposed, it
feels like a violation
and yet it's so little: just
weird facts, your street, some numbers,
you could have made them up. But
Hideo is smiling (he always smiles),
the state's computer drives
have whispered their slow oracle,
the flash blinds you
and they unfold,
these wings you knew you had.

1:20 PM - Running away, engaging

"Since he was quite a young man, Gideon Somerville had grown used to the role of bystander. Other men -- less intelligent, shallower men -- plunged into a tidal race of action, conflict, argument and sinewy bravado. But within Gideon something shrank from pressing his intangible opinions, his doubt-ridden intellect and humane heart on the destinies of others as helpless as himself. He knew the ache of indecision too well."

-Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings

That's me. Not all of me, but a decent portrait that anyone who knows me well would recognize. And there are, indeed, a handful of people who do know me that well.

So when I act -- not wiltingly or with equivocation, but without stint, with clarity and perseverance -- when I press for a specific result for specific reasons, which is more likely: that I have studied all sides of a complex question and am devoting rare passion to something of singular importance, on singular principle? Or -- that I have changed? That I am now become a person that someone close to me would not recognize, charging into a half-reasoned position, abandoning principle and humanity, grasping wherever I can for mere monetary advantage, not caring whom I hurt in the process?

That is not to say that I am right. It's always possible to be wrong. But it's more than troubling that someone who used to know me would assume the latter, would so automatically assume that my very character has somehow dissolved -- that I would be capable of such action and conflict on a whim -- that they won't even investigate the question thoroughly on their own side, with an open mind.

2:03 PM - Presidential timber

Palin speaks from apparently prepared remarks, at a staged event, surrounded by family and supporters, and triggers a new national sport: trying to figure out what she meant.

Maverickiness, like cholesterol, comes in good and bad varieties. There's the good kind, where your actions adhere to a clear, consistent core of values, irrespective of peer pressure. And there's the bad kind, where you just do any old flaky shit, without rhyme or reason.

You betcha. *wink*

10:03 AM - We can use the grill now

The Carolina wren family seems to be done for this season -- they were very active and vocal a week ago, angrily warding off squirrels and shuttling food and nesting materials under the grill cover.

It's possible, I suppose, that the squirrels got at the eggs or chicks, but I'm preferring the thought that the brood successfully set flight. The nest stands silent, soft with moss.

2:50 PM - Plots and plans IV

( Previously )

10:40 PM - Trailer, père et fils

From our walk today...

5:18 PM - Plots and plans III

(I feel badly that I didn't get a picture in between these two.) Most of the squash-like plants are volunteers. There are also three volunteer tomatoes and a volunteer potato. The mustard planted along back edge at the near end has suffered from some kind of pest, but I pinched and munched one of the leaves just yesterday, and it was delicious. Can't wait to have enough to put into a real salad.



( Previously )

2:19 PM - Where's my blind spot?

Can't find it. I know I put it down here somewhere....

We humans are so, so remarkably good at knowing we're right. I am tempted to despise the people who are never wrong. Don't they know it's impossible to never be wrong? And that therefore they're wrong about one of the most fundamental things -- their eternal rightness?

I'm not talking about the pundits. That's their job, I think: to act knowing. Nobody knows. But people can be convinced, to act, or not to act, by appealing to them with stories, and dog-whistle words, and myths that echo the memes they grew up with, with sleight of hand, with rhetoric -- as long as it all comes from a semblance of knowing, of rightness.

We've had some presidents who were uber-pundits. Reagan comes to mind. Dubya was something more, and less. His only message, like machine code, came from the underpinnings of that knowingness. "We're gonna win." Let's not look too closely at who "we" is, or at when "gonna" is, or at what "win" means. Don't ask those questions at all, don't ask any questions, because if you do, you simply place yourself among those who don't know, who aren't sure, who aren't sure they're right.

And if you aren't sure you're right -- if you're an asker, not an answerer -- you're just a wuss, a wrong-headed wuss.

4:19 PM - NNTR

"If everything is under control, you are going too slow." -- Mario Andretti

* * *

On a walk today, we disturbed a turkey buzzard feasting (er, snacking) on a squirrel carcass. Very reptilian he was, as he stepped away up a side path, feigning indifference, and waited for us to pass.

Come to think of it, maybe he was waiting for us to pass.

* * *

Morbid thoughts much?

My aunt is in hospital near her home in Ontario. I'm not quite sure what's ailing her, but apparently it's winning. I never knew her well but she is very, very bright, and according to my recollection has a quick, acerbic wit.

Funny the things one recalls from among the handful of crossed paths in two lifetimes. Her first husband, shooting up his thigh with insulin (I was about 12, and had never seen anyone self-administer with a hypodermic). Her second husband, a barrel-chested bear of man, a former cop, stevedore, lumberjack, and bartender, and a published author. His huge hands and gentle way.

I never met her third husband. Together they raised greyhounds, I think.

It's sad to find people slipping away. Then there are just those odd, mysterious memories. And, one hopes, an imprint. Something that made a difference.

My Aunt Ellen has.

* * *

Edited to add: Not sure about greyhounds; maybe it's whippets.

12:42 PM - pATRIOT = TrAITOR

Blanagram!

Anyway, I was thinking. I know, I know -- why work on Saturday? But what is your mental picture of your country, as a 'character'? As a being, an essence?

In my case, this is the USA. It feels very different to me now, under Obama, than it did the previous four years.

During the Bush years I winced a bit, squirmed, feeling that we (the country) were making a preeminent virtue of warlikeness, that the Bush Doctrine of preemptive destruction of putative enemies not only put us outside the law, but because it was not accompanied by any sense of principle, obligation, insight, internal debate, or objective for the greater good (other than 'safety' from terrorists) -- and especially, without introspection into whose 'greater good' we were pursuing -- put me in a persistent state of grief. Grief toward all sorts of 'others' whom we (the country, again, and its government), I thought, could afford to cherish: brown people, red people, yellow people, black people, poor people, Muslim people, non-people people (e.g., animals), the planet, the atmosphere, future generations, Louisianans, immigrants, the Founding Fathers, consumers, children, sick people, non-Evangelical Christians, etc., etc. It felt like the country could afford to cherish no-one and nothing, in deference to the basest bellicose instincts.

In what way is our country now 'new'? It does feel new. Still a bit inchoate, a bit like an ugly duckling struggling out of its shell. A dozen major, but half-realized, initiatives crowd Obama's docket -- but each addresses a broad swath of public policy that has seemed neglected.

Of course I'm conscious that these characterizations are not only framed by my own values, but also by reports and comment in the media and the blogosphere, and influenced by those I choose to listen to. A Bush/Cheney supporter, listening to right-wing talk radio, has a very different characterization of our country in mind. They may indeed be grieving -- that we appear weak and soft, that we may 'lose' a war, that different-colored people are achieving advancement, that ... well, it's hard for me to put into words all the ways they may be grieving, because I don't really understand those values. But I do recognize that people see things differently than I.

6:06 PM - Apocalypse

I was (half-)kidding about how we want to be neighbors to the kids "when the apocalypse comes." The kids, among them, have an extraordinary collection of relevant survival skills. Mostly we were referring to Emma's knowledge of organic, sustainable farming.

A little alarmed, my mother asked, "You don't really think an apocalypse is coming? You don't hope for it?"

I didn't really get a chance to answer at the time, so here's an answer now:

1. No, I don't hope for an apocalypse.


2. What do I mean by apocalypse? Not nuclear armageddon, certainly. Nor even, necessarily, complete social collapse. But there is plenty of evidence that local, temporary disruption of services can happen, and we also know from Katrina, Ike, etc., that in those situations there can be a tipping point beyond which even emergency services collapse, and large numbers of people are quickly reduced to a basic survival mode that is very unfamiliar to most.


3. Such disruptions do happen. Climate change; an angry, well-armed, disfranchised religio-fanatic right wing; the economic crisis: any of these could lead to local or regional disruptions (very local in the case of a layoff). In northern New England, regular folks for years have known to be prepared for prolonged power outages, blizzards, etc., with a well-stocked storm cellar.


4. Most important to me is the simple idea that most of the things one might do to prepare for an apocalyptic scenario are good things to do anyway: learn basic first aid, stock the home for a period of self-sufficiency, know something about how to grow, cook, and eat food without restaurants, cars, money, or petroleum, and in general live leanly, with a minimal carbon footprint, and not be overly reliant on technological comforts.

11:27 PM - From the lake

Upon Reopening the Studio in Spring

Eight soft prophets
    whispering hard truth
    are flung across the dusty floor
    frozen where they fell.

One, their vanguard, beat its copper wings
    to tattered lace.

The other seven, undoubting,
    high-stepped from overwintered chrysalids,
    and crisp as pictures in a nature guide,
    tested the close air on seven -- fourteen -- pairs of wings.

It must have been Tuesday.
    Too cold, they twisted inside-out
    like failed origami.

One tortoiseshell prophet,
    seven tortoiseshell disciples.
    Come Fall, the caterpillars
    will seek those eaves again.

Do not retell their story.
    The summer pastor
    will make a hash of it.

May 2009

4:26 PM - Part of this complete breakfast

Richfood's store-brand "Bite Size Corn Cereal" is just about as good as Quaker's "Life" cereal (and much cheaper).



But another thing I like about the generics: their honest names.

2:08 PM - And the right-wingers accuse liberals of 'destroying the US Constitution'...

From CNN.com:

"In recent weeks, Republicans have called for keeping Guantanamo open, saying abuses at the facility are a thing of the past and describing it as a state-of-the-art prison that's nicer than some U.S. prisons. And they warn that terrorists who can't be convicted might be set free in the United States. (Emphasis mine.)

Imagine that. Someone who can't be convicted being set free. Unconscionable!

2:14 PM - This jumbled life

I think this is very cool. That's a dolphin spine made into a dictionary stand. (Link.)

Also, I was amazed and delighted to hear one of our neighborhood mockingbirds has added several of the "six-tone siren" sequences to his/her repertoire. I googled mockingbird car alarm and came up with quite a few hits, including some audio files. However, none of the audio files did my bird justice. I'll have to try to record him/her myself. Apparently it's a fairly well-known phenomenon.

12:38 PM - Remember when?

The brain appears to be, in part, a machine for encoding and persisting responses to stimuli, both 'danger' stimuli and 'reward' stimuli. I've written before about Curie's instinct for tracking food 'nodes' in the house.

Our usual reference to 'danger' stimuli considers primitive man: "Unkh drink pond. Unkh sick bad after. All people no drink pond."

Our brains encode these patterns very well -- you should have seen the bruise M got jumping out of the way of a marauding wasp.

Not many people under the age of 35 will share the following learned, and now useless, response, which I am stuck with: Do not put bumper stickers, key chains, or fridge novelties next to computer disks.

There was actually a pretty narrow window of time when (a) magnetic laminates were an extremely common novelty, AND (b) computer floppy disks were ubiquitous, pocket-sized, and used magnetic media. Now disks are optical, and a lot of novelty laminates use electrostatic effects or low-gum adhesives instead of magnets.

I think about this when people talk about the way things "always are" or "always must be."

12:01 PM - Don't bogart that reefer

CNN.com reported that marijuana in the US is gaining in potency. (Not sure how this is new news.)

Although there is no discussion of cause in the article, I got to thinking: the folks who oppose decriminalization of pot will probably grab this report as a talking point in their favor. Of those opponents, some number are hard line religio-conservatives.

Too bad for them that the only explanations for this observation are:

• Evolution


• Climate change


• Climate change and evolution


• Experimental error, sample bias, etc. -- in which case the observation is faulty.

Not that this will deter the Glenn Becks of the country -- it's perfectly simple to shout a talking point while ignoring its disagreeable implications.

Edited to add: Actually, there's another explanation: migration from Hawaii. <Shakes fist> OBAMA!