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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Tuesday Poem - In the Desert by Stephen Crane

In the Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

I watched the Czech movie Tobruk on SBS recently because I have an Australian friend who is a Rat of Tobruk  and he has told me many stories. But I didn't know there had been a Czech  unit defending Tobruk so I was intrigued, and I also wanted to see what sort of fist they made of any Australians that appeared. The Australians were believable but absolutely not the focus of the story. That in itself was fascinating. At the end of the movie this poem by Stephen Crane was displayed. I hadn't come upon it before and I liked it very much. It was perfectly in context.
It made me wonder if perhaps T. S. Eliot had read Crane because the line – I will show you fear in a handful of dust – (from The Waste Land) came into my mind as I read the poem on the screen. I read the subtitles of course, because the poem had been translated into Czech.

If you want to read more Tuesday poems click on the quill icon above.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Tuesday Poem - Outback by Kerry Popplewell

3.00 am Copley, South Australia

A single aeroplane

throbs through silence.

Dogs converse,

their morse erratic.

Awake in our tent

we try to translate

their talk of distance;

their talk of cold.

Salt bush. Blue bush. Blue Smoke.

Roads straight as a perspective line.

Subdued by space

we expected silence,

not knowing how various

the voices of the wind can be

when it goes scouring

rock face and ridge.

It spoke a language

we could not decipher –

a hoarse ululation

from another time.

A broken windmill by a disused well,

rail sleepers rotting, stockyard posts askew.

These aren’t the kind of records this land keeps.

It takes a longer view.

Roadhouse at Ebenezer

An Anangu man points to a map

showing tribal areas. This took six years,

he says, to make. When it was completed,

many complained that their tribe wasn’t on it.

Roast lamb and beer in the bar;

all night, the generator’s rumble.

Behind the campsite hedge,

horses snort and shake

in early sun. On each fencepost,

a magpie provides national coverage.

Coober Pedy

Consider the opal tailings:

those small, most perfect cones.

They glow silver at dusk –

a spent moonscape mirage;

at midday, a set

made to film Desolation.

People live below ground

to escape from the sky.

The sky knows no limit.

The sun gives no quarter.

Graveyard, Alice Springs

Hot gravel underfoot. Grit in the eyes.

A few graves of the famous – then the rest.

Even in death, distinctions:

the Afghan camelmen, all facing Mecca.

Far out where faint tracks end

their testy camels roam and multiply.

This is a poem that really intrigued me because it is a New Zealander engaging with the Australian outback – and all that that entails.

It is in Kerry's book Leaving The Tableland published by Steele Roberts.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Tuesday Poem - Two Poems by Janet Jackson

It softly touches the bricks
at its edge,
a gentle but definite border.
The bricks say
      You can't come past here!
      This is our flower bed!
The lawn says
       OK, I won't
       but let me look.
The bricks let it look.

Breastfeeding a four-month old

As you stroke me
carefully opening your hand flat
I realise
that the annoying jerky movements
your fist made a month ago
were your very best caresses.

Here are two short poems from Janet Jackson's book Coracle which I picked up when I was in Perth. You can get the book from here -
and it is also available at Collected Works, Gleebooks, Mary Martins, Crow Books and a few other discerning book shops.

If you want to read more Tuesday Poems click on the quill icon at the top of the page.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Tuesday Poem - By Moonlight by Jennifer Compton

By Moonlight

You didn’t know where Moscow is or who Mozart was.
I touched you and asked you to dance but your face collapsed.
As you slammed the pupils of your eyes shut you unleashed
a powerful one-note perfume, like a carapace, like a cicatrice.

I loved you. I remember you by moonlight, inaccurately,
with the white hair-slide of false hope curving like your shy smile.
I remember you by moonlight, accurately, suddenly barefoot,
suddenly adroit, as the white horse lay and groaned in his sleep.

The moon swayed, the pine trees,
on your boundary, like a premonition,
switched perspective, becoming foreground
with smooth, elusive panache. Trees can do that.

I’ll take my teeth out and put them in a glass beside the bed.
So I can’t bite. This is my last and best gift. Such sentiment!

Here's a poem from my book Barefoot published by Picaro Press.
On its very last chance at the prizes it got the nod and got shortlisted for the John Bray Award at the Adelaide Festival. Oh well done, little book.

If you want to read more Tuesday Poems click on the quill icon at the top of the page.


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It has been a day full of spots in Reception Class in support of Children in Need. We wore our own clothes to school and collected donations in our Pudsey Bear bucket which made it very heavy.

As well as wearing our own clothes, some us even designed our own tops to wear!

For our maths task this week, we stuck to the theme of spots and decorated some spotty biscuits. We chose a number card, read the number and added that amount of spots to our biscuits, remembering to count each one carefully.

We hope our spotty biscuits taste as good as they look!

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Theft of bikes in St. Marys

Perth County Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is investigating two separate bicycle thefts that occurred over the weekend.

On Saturday December 31, 2016, between approximately 11:00 pm and 7:00 am, a blue and grey Kona women’s mountain bike was stolen from an unlocked garage on Waterloo Street South in the Town of St Marys.

On Sunday January 1, 2017, between approximately midnight and 7:00 am, a black and white Norco Bigfoot bike was stolen overnight from a garden shed on James Street in the Town of St Marys.

If you see a suspicious vehicle or person, please report it to the police immediately.

The Perth County OPP is requesting anyone with information that can assist police to call 1-888-310-1122. Should you wish to remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or submit a secure web-tip at, where you may be eligible to receive a cash reward of up to $2,000.

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Update on Valuation Formula’s For Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE:ZEN)

In looking at the Value Composite score for Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE:ZEN), we see that the firm has a rank of 83.  This is based on a 0 to 100 scale where a lower score indicated and undervalued company and a higher score would indicate an expensive or overvalued company.  This rank was developed by James O’Shaughnessy in 2011.  The score is derived from five different valuation ratios including price to book value, price to sales, EBITDA to Enterprise Vale, price to cash flow and price to earnings.

Going further we can also look at the Q.i. (Liquidity) value of the stock. A the time of writing, Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE:ZEN) has a Q.i. score of 65.00000. This ranking system is calculated using the following ratio indicators: EBITDA yield, Earnings yield, FCF Yield and Liquidity (Q.i). This is a valuable indicator that can also help uncover undervalued companies. A stock with a 0-20% score indicates that the stock has a high value and low turnover, which results in a better chance of a stock being mispriced. A lower valued company would yield a score between 80-100%. This would indicate that the firm has large analyst interest and the chance of the stock being mispriced is much lower.

In looking at the Piotroski F-score for Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE:ZEN) we note that it has a score of 4. This score was developed by Joseph Piotroski, an accounting professor who used a combination of ratios to combine the profitability, Funding and efficiency. The score is based on a 1 to 9 scale where companies with the purpose of discovering low price to book ratios. Investing in companies with only a 8 or 9 score yielding over 13% returns over a 20 year period for the professor. As such, a higher score (8-9) indicates that the stock is at attractive levels where a low score (0-2) would indicate a poor result.

Shares of Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE:ZEN) have 4.00464% short interest of their total outstanding, a change of -1.02420% from 3 months ago. The stock has a six month price index return of $1.11872. Quickly looking at the recent volatility of the stock we can see that the 12month number stands at 43.060400. The 6 month volatility stands at 33.991300 and the 3 month stands at 29.875600. This percentage is based on weekly log normal returns and standard deviation of the share price over the time period specified.

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November 1, 2008

Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted

Chuck Palahniuk is king of the saleable gross-out. This guy made his name with Fight Club -- an extreme descent into the do-nothing, thirty-something generation that has little more than Simpsons quotes and dry wit to bond over -- and has tried to outdo himself on the excrete-o-meter ever since. (Case in point: Invisible Monsters, where a distraught model blows off her own jaw to explore the other side of the beauty myth. Case in point: Choke, in which sex addicts prey on weaklings, including each other, in a search for some sort of fulfillment.

In Haunted, Palahniuk doesn't merely give us one social screwup; he gives us more than 20. They all pack themselves, And Then There Were None-style, into an abandoned theatre for a writers' retreat. Of course, the bodies, and the body parts, pile up shortly after that alley door clicks shut.

Enjoy. Just don't read chapter one over lunch. Yeuch.


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Personal Vs Traditional Stories

I attended "Barefaced Stories" at the Blue Room in Perth last night. This is a MOTH style storytelling of true personal stories, usually humorous and often painfully hilarious as tellers reveal their past folly's and triumphs.
After the performances (which are capped at 6min each) I was talking with one of the performers about the genre of fairy-tales and metaphorical stories vs undisguised personal stories. She was arguing that metaphorical stories are constructed by an author and therefore have an intended meaning, while personal stories leave the audience free to take whatever meaning they want.
In some ways I agree with this, any metaphor is created out of someone's impression that the metaphor represents something and while someone else may have a very different impression or reading of the metaphor there is no getting away from the fact that there was an 'intended' meaning.
However, and this is what I find disappointing, personal stories while allowing the audience to interpret their own meaning also allow the audience to not question the meaning at all. By not 'intending' a meaning, 'no meaning' is achieved and this is what allows personal stories of this kind to become purely a form entertainment, divorced from the teaching and nourishing aspects that traditional storytelling has always had.
So this is the predicament for traditional storytellers; Stories hold within them the seeds of wisdom but our postmodern society rejects any deliberate attempts to convey an intended meaning, because doing so is akin to saying "I'm better than you because I know something that you should learn."
Since I am attempting to convey something i.e. how I feel and what I'm trying to figure out, I find that a metaphorical story can best describe it.

There was once a small island where lived two siblings. One day the ground shook with an earthquake and the people knew that a tsunami was coming. Now on this island there were two hills and each sibling ran and climbed one of the hills. One sibling looked across at the other and called out to them.
"Quick that hill will not be high enough, come up here with me."
"What!" cried the other "Your hill is lower than mine. You should come up here."
They argued back and forth but could not come to an agreement before the tsunami hit and the one on the lower hill drowned leaving the survivor alone and miserable.

I want a better ending for this story. I am not content to either be drowned or miserable but how do we discover which is the higher hill?

 I think that a deep

 I think that a deep personal story holds within it mythic potential. It can take on metaphoric dimensions. And yet  since a personal story is in 'real' time and space,  it can be difficult to see beyond the literal.  And I think we human beings need to see beyond the literal - into the world of metaphor, for personal transformation. Therefore the comment that personal stories do not have an intended meaning and leave the audience free to take what meaning they want,  perplexes me.  Telling a personal story can have huge intentions.  That is why the great storyteller Donald Davis said so wisely to me ' never tell a story that isnt finished' - because we can use our own story for our own thearpy, to debrief, to warn others, to teach, to express our bitterness, a sense of grace,   to be seen.

 I think that a traditional story, a fairy tale, a mythic story on the other hand can mean something different to each person in the room. It speaks to us as in dream, with images and mysteries and achetypes. They are not of this world, beyond time and space, and it is easier to see it with vagaries and uncertainties, to notice when the soul sits up and takes notice.  What is the wolf - today? what does the curse represent to me now? what does salvation look like for me, in that happily ever after.  What form is the prince of my dreams?  what is the  integation of male and female that I seek......

Even new born babies dream. We are wired towards metaphor, and surely the language of fairy tales and myths leend themselves to the endless interpretation of metaphor more easily than a personal story.

Jesse, A great topic for

Jesse, A great topic for discussion and I love your hill story.
While I agree with Donna that personal stories can be hugely intentional- I think I know what you are referring to. Sometimes people tell tales that haven't been sufficiently digested for there to be much more to them than entertainment. With reference to Donald Davis and his advice to Donna, they are unfinished.
This is fascinating to me in the context of Australian culture.
"Stories hold within them the seeds of wisdom but our postmodern society rejects any deliberate attempts to convey an intended meaning, because doing so is akin to saying "I'm better than you because I know something that you should learn."
I think you have hit a nail on the head. When I did Sociology of Women at Uni, I wrote an essay on the patriarchal nature of Australian society and its violent roots. Convicts were treated so brutally that to speak out of turn or to rise up above your peers was to possibly invite the attention of guard who might flog you to death on a whim. Thus emerged the tall poppy syndrome (there were other contributing factors of course) and the culture of mate-ship- where you were equal as long as you were white, male and didn't set yourself above your mates. Otherwise, you might get called a 'smart a*#@e', excluded or bullied.
Here come some awful generalisations, but in my experience, Americans are quite happy for someone to teach them. They are enthusiastic students and listeners. "That was absolutely fantastic!!" An Australian in the same audience would say shrug and say, "That wasn't bad."
I think we still have a deep streak of anti-authouritansim, (yet we still can't get the numbers to become a Republic- strange) so that we are very easily irritated by being taught something. I am a bit that way myself. I like stories which have depth but which I may have to unpack, rather than being whopped over the head with a sanctimonious moral.
I am in the middle of marking storytelling assignments by University students. They have to record themselves telling a story to five people- preferably children as the subject is offered through the School of Education. However some students had to tell in front of adults. One did a fabulous job of the amusing tale original tale by Terry Jones (Monty Python fame) of 'Dr Bonocolus and the Devil'. She said in her reflection that 4 out of 5 of her friends liked the story, but one complained that the ending was too predictable. I replied:
Loving the folktale genre is niche thing at the moment, but I feel this is changing. If one in five adults disliked the ending- that is more about personal taste for folktales versus stories with a twist. Folktales are food for the soul, but it is not everyone's medicine.
I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts as I think this could be a very significant thing to get our head around as we work to promote storytelling in Australia.
Jones,  T.  (1983).    Dr  Bonoculus's  Devil.  In  Fairy  Tales  (pp.  119-‐122).   Ringwood,  Victoria:  Puffin  Books.

 I would argue that a well

 I would argue that a well told personal story is also constructed by someone. They have chosen the event, they have chosen the perspective to take (humourous/serious/tell two sides or just one/etc) and importantly on what note to end. And as Donna writes it is also important to note 'when' people choose to tell a story.

I personally believe both are constructed and both offer lessons to the listeners. There are personal stories from refugee children and kids on the streets that I will never forget. There are also traditional tales that I have dwelled on and derived meaning from for decades.

IF the listeners choose to take a lesson they will from personal or traditional tales. Although from my own experience working with groups I feel that listeners can easily dismiss personal stories.

It happened to 'them' not 'me'.

That could never happen here in Australia.

That was in the past.

Stuff always happens to that dude.

Id never make those mistakes.

I feel that the metaphor used in traditional tales places it beyond time/person/country. This allows every person to relate to the characters and situations. This is the strength and the long lasting nature of the traditional tale.

Thanks for the thoughts Jesse and generating this discussion.


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Thursday, December 25, 2008

Holiday vidspam

Hello, all! I just got back from Christmas with my family, and I wanted to stop by to share some things on my mind.

In my very first post, I shared issues with It's a Wonderful Life...a movie I used to love. This year, I seem to have found a new Christmas movie, and that's White Christmas. It's the whole package: a buddy movie, a holiday film, a musical, and even a patriotic (and timely) shout-out to the armed forces. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It may be the actual "anti-IAWL". The message, if there is one, seems to be that the best way to help others is to do what you love. Very Joseph Campbell, non?

Here, in my opinion, is the most brain-breaking moment of the movie. we sadly bid farewell to an all-around entertainer, a classic sex symbol, and a free spirit ahead of her time. She also happened to sing one of my favorite Christmas songs. Rest in peace, Eartha Kitt.

Happy Holidays to all, however you celebrate.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Californication rant (Season 2 spoilers)

Okay, so I just got done watching an episode of Californication..."In a Lonely Place". In it, Hank hooks up with his daughter's English teacher, only to find out that she is the single mother of his daughter's boyfriend.

What really got me was that the boy was absolutely incensed. Okay, I will allow that the circumstances in which he found out (i.e., Hank coming downstairs naked) were far from ideal. But he acted as if his mother had been somehow dishonored.

Are we really living in in such a patriarchy, where it makes sense for a fourteen-year-old boy to act as the warden of his mother's chastity? Last I checked, I did not think a women in this culture had to defer to their oldest male relative, even if that relative was younger than her. Hank's daughter Becca was crushed as well, but that was only because of her boyfriend's irrational reaction.

Both Hank and the English teacher were available and consenting adults. They did nothing wrong. This could have been a teachable moment, but instead, Hank caved to a child's demands over his lover's protests. Her response should have been: "Look, I'm the parent here; and sex is healthy and fun as long as it'safe and ethical."

Okay, I realize that not everyone's values system allows for sex outside of marriage; but I don't think that was the paradigm that the boy was operating from. Even if it had been, Hank's mother was not a helpless victim and, I would argue, was no more besmirched than he was.

Of course, none of this kept Becca from getting all the best lines, as usual....

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Let the Right One In

Last Saturday, I had one of the worst night's sleep of my life. I had just seen Let the Right One In ("Lat den Rate Komme In") at Nashville's historic Belcourt theatre.

This Swedish film revolves around Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old boy living in a Stockholm tenement in 1982. He finds companionship when Eli, a strange girl his age, moves in next door. Soon, however, murders begin to occur in the area. The audience gets to see that the man living with Eli is committing them...but that she seems to be in charge. It isn't long before Oskar, like Bella Swan, figures out what his new friends really is.

As other reviews have pointed out, the action takes place in winter and mostly at night, either outside or under artificial light. This goes a long way toward setting the tone. While there are no weak performances here, Lina Leannderson's Eli is a fae and unsettling presend from the moment we meet her, when she executes a graceful drop jump from a jungle gym

As with most horror movies that are actually good, the true horror here is human nature. The bullying that Oskar stoically suffers is some of the worst that I've ever seen onscreen. There is believable and often moving tenderness between Eli and Oskar...such as the scene where she eats a chocolate to avoid hurting his feelings, and ends up retching shortly after. At the same time, this is juxtaposed with the cruelty she shows to others.

The story takes few liberties with vampire lore. These vampires have to be invited in and have to stay out of sunlight. (There is some ambiguity on how vampires are made.) There are a few cinematic innovations. Animals react strongly to vampires...very strongly. We never actually see any fangs, but we do see what happens if a vampire comes in without being invited. This is also not a movie that makes vampirism itself sexy. The murders committed for Eli are disgusting, and the victims are humanized. Her own attacks, too, are vicious--due to her age, she uses deception rather than seduction. You feel the horror of life with a monster.

Like Twilight, this movie deals with budding sexuality. It looks at an earlier stage, however, and never directly addresses the mechanics of adolescence. One dialog is a mirror of one that takes place in Twilight ("How old are you?"). There is one scene, where we see what vampires look like in pitch dark, that is creepier than anything in Twilight.

For vampire romance, I prefer stories like The Silver Kiss. The vampire moves on, in one way or another, because it's existence is unnatural, and it would not wish that on the one it loves. The human lover returns to normal life, both stronger and wiser for the experience.

This is not that movie.

Instead, at the end, we are left remembering the fate of Eli's human "father", and wondering Oskar's fate will be the same if he does not become a vampire. The looming question makes the tenderness that the children share, even in the last scene, all the more bittersweet.

I expected that Let the Right One In might be more frightening than Twilight. I did not expect it to be more romantic.


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Reason: The Disgruntled D.C. Resident in That Anti-Airbnb Ad Isn’t Who She Says She Is

by Eric Boehm | Reason

A concerned, motherly voice pleads for your attention. Soft piano music plays. We see shots of a quiet neighborhood street in Anacostia, a traditionally black community on the eastern side of Washington, D.C.

“I was 5 years old when we moved to the neighborhood, but it doesn’t feel like the place I grew up or where I raised my children,” says the unnamed woman, whose grayed hair suggests that she’s old enough to be wise and trusted, even as her voice carries hints of youthful vigor worn down by the sadness of her story. Shots of her family photos. More sad music.

What has caused this woman so much pain? Commercial landlords using Airbnb, she says. They have evicted her neighbors from their homes without a care, knowing they can make more money by renting to strangers and tourists.

“We end up with higher rents and less affordable housing,” she says. “I’m tired of feeling like an outsider in my own neighborhood.”

Indeed, the woman in the ads is a stranger in Anacostia. And if her appearance, voice, and mannerisms seem like something out of central casting, it’s because they are. Because the woman in the ad is not a resident of Anacostia, but is an actress from New York City, NBC-4 reported Wednesday.

Share Better DC, the nonprofit connected to the hotel industry that is responsible for the ad, confirmed that she is an actress but claimed that the ad was intended to depict the real experiences D.C. residents have had with Airbnb in multiple neighborhoods, NBC-4 says.

Fittingly, the fake Anacostia resident who can’t believe how much her neighborhood has changed was outed by a real longtime Anacostia resident: Greta Fuller, who posted on Twitter that Airbnb has made her neighborhood a better place.

“Far too long has our community been labeled as a place not to visit, but through Airbnb people have found a gem and a host of great people living in Washington, D.C.,” Fuller wrote. That’s something, she added, that “no agency or entity has ever done for our community.”

The ad is intended to sway public support in favor of a bill that would put new limits on how property owners in Washington, D.C., can use services like Airbnb. Dozens of residents testified at a public hearing last week on the proposal to cap the number of days that homes could be rented through short-term rental services. There’s no timetable for a final city council vote on the bill.

Emily Cullum, a spokeswoman for the Travel Technology Association, a trade association that advocates for transparency and competition in the hospitality marketplace, told Reason that the ad makes it look like Share Better “couldn’t locate a resident with a real story to fit their anti-short term rental narrative, so they went ahead and made one up.”

“Short-term rentals help residents like Greta Fuller make ends meet while welcoming visitors to neighborhoods that hotels have shown no interest in servicing,” Cullum wrote in an email. “The D.C. City Council needs to recognize that corporate interests are using deceptive practices to wage war on D.C. residents who open their homes to travelers.”

In a broader way, this ad represents the opening of a new front in the ongoing war between the hotel industry and the room-sharing services that have cracked open the hospitality market.

As Reason reported last week, documents leaked from meetings of the American Hotel and Lodging Association show how national hotel lobbyists played a role in convincing some city and state governments to enact anti-Airbnb rules over the past year.

The next step, according to minutes of an AHLA gathering in November of last year, was to make the fight more personal—with ads like the one now running on Washington, D.C., area TV stations.

To build on their perceived successes in 2016, the AHLA outlined several strategies to implement in 2017. Among them: “Aggressively counter Airbnb’s ‘we’re just helping the middle-class make ends meet’ narrative with a wave of personal testimonials of consumer harm through a ‘My Neighborhood’ paid and social campaign.

In other words, expect more of this to be popping up in ads across the country, wherever Airbnb and hotel officials are clashing over residents’ right to do what they want on their own property. But the thing about “personal testimonials” is that they really only work when the person behind them is telling the truth.


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Sunday, April 01, 2007

Happy April

Happy April. To celebrate the coming of winter (finally!) in sunny Queensland next week is officially declared Lepidoptera, week. For those among you who are not Latin scholars or naturalists this means......
Butterfly Week

In honor of this, I post the profound words of Dolly Parton...
Love is like a butterfly
As soft and gentle as a sigh
The multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings
Love makes your heart feel strange inside
It flutters like soft wings in flight
Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing

I feel it when you're with me
It happens when you kiss me
That rare and gentle feeling that I feel inside
Your touch is soft and gentle
Your kiss is warm and tender
Whenever I am with you I think of butterflies

In appreciation of my dear friend Rebecca the Wrecker I have to add that Nana Mouskouri does a lovely version of this song also.

Feel free to e-mail suggestions , images and Lepidoptera, related things.

1 comment:

Rebecca-the-Wrecker said...

hoorah for winter and butterfly week!


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Monday, April 11, 2011

Oh My God! A Post?!!!

Sort of!!! More like a post foretelling more posts.

Oh my gosh, you guys, I have a whopping three followers now. One of you is even a stranger to me in real life. This is serious business. In light of such events, I feel the obligation to put something new on here, AND HERE IT IS! But seriously, there will be new posts someday. I will try really super hard not to abandon this blog thingy. In fact, I have six whole posts started in my little "Drafts" area. I'm almost definitely gonna scrap one of them because I started it so long ago that it's no longer relevant, but the remaining five are awesome! Oh man, when I finish one of those real posts and put it up here, it's gonna be epic. Your minds will be blown. Just you wait. You cannot get your hopes up high enough for this. Are you getting psyched? You should be.

Okay, I'm gonna go to stats now.


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Saturday, August 16, 2014

War Game 3

The final episode in this series on chess in World War 1 starts at another grim location where the game had a following: the prisoner of war camp.

Naturally in British documentation it is captured Germans who are playing, as here watched by a soldier from the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment...

At Querrieu, near Amiens, Battle of the Somme, 1916
Photographer: Lt. Ernest Brooks.
© IWM Q1598  Also here

...or not.

These were POWs - prisoners of war. But there was another kind of prisoner during the war: the prisoner of conscience. The conscientious objectors - 16,000 in the UK is the figure that crops up - varied in degree: from a refusal to take the lives of others (and who may yet have served at the front as medical aides or stretcher bearers i.e. in considerable danger), through to a blanket rejection of all war-related activity. Possibly this chess set was fashioned by one of those latter "unconditionalists" whose stand on personal principle cost them their liberty.
Copy negative of an improvised chess set
made and used by a conscientious objector to pass the time while in prison (IWM caption)
© IWM Q103672  Mr Henry Smith photograph collection.
Here is reference to another improvised chess set - demonstrating an abiding need to have one at hand.
A correspondent writes: through the generosity of a friend of mine, Sapper E. Bramwell, I have added to my collection of chess a set of men made in France from old cartridge cases, bullets, etc. , and very well made too. The board is made out of a bit of a piano which was shattered by a shell in one of the YMCA Huts. This will form an interesting memento of how chess eased the time for our boys during the war. The Chess Amateur April 1918
I don't suppose the "conscies" were in the forefront of Mr. A.J. Neilson's mind when he made the following observation, quoted by The Chess Amateur in October 1915...
It is remarkable how many eye witnesses and correspondents are testifying to the universality of chess and how the game is being played under the most adverse circumstances on the battle front and even under the fire of the enemy guns, both on land and sea. The reports ... are not only about the Allied forces, but also about the Hun; and by all accounts, it would appear to be the case that there is a goodly proportion of chess enthusiasts amongst the combatants of all nations…
...but we should applaud the sentiment anyway - and we'll come back to the significance of chess in the war at the end.

In the rest of this final episode we'll count the cost of the War among chess players, and we begin with another game played under those "most adverse circumstances".  It requires, as an introduction, a further re-telling of the appalling (though it would have been - if you take out the chess - commonplace) story that was given, said The Chess Amateur of  August 1915, by The Australasia who had taken it from L'Italia Scacchistica. It was published "not because of any merit" in the game itself, "but because of the especially interesting circumstances under which it was played". After you have read it you may wonder whether that word "interesting" quite meets the case.
Game played in the trenches.
A. Vanoode, of Brussels, was stationed in one of the trenches in the neighbourhood of Saint George, and during a lull in the hostilities proposed a game of chess to a fellow enthusiast, a French comrade named Dussaaixe. This was played upon a pocket chess-board produced by one of them, and proceeded without incident to Black's 17th move, when the sentinel sounded an alarm, and the discharge of artillery shook the ground. M.Vanoode at once made his way to his post at the extremity of the trench, M. Dussaixe calling after him "j'aurai vain....," but the sentance was never finished, for with a terrible crash a shell exploded in the trench killing him instantly. In truth, a tragic ending to the game. White was killed in a moment of victory, and Black lies in hospital dangerously wounded."

Here are some further examples of the relentless toll that the war took on those "chess enthusiasts amongst the combatants of all nations" (and all strengths). The Chess Amateur was even-handed in reporting on players enlisted for both sides. What follows (in approximate date order) is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg, perhaps your club could add to it...
From German sources, we glean that no less that 584 chess players have been called to the front; that of these fifty-nine have received the Iron Cross for heroic deeds, fifty-five have been wounded and thirty-two fallen in battle. – “The Times-Picayune." American Chess Magazine Vol XII (1915)
The Field” had recorded on 3rd July 1915 the death of Sergeant R.D. Dawkins of the Liverpool Scottish, killed in action at Ypres. Dawkins, aged 24, had played for Lancashire against Yorkshire in 1913 and 1914. Mike Conroy, History of Lancashire Chess (2012)

The sinking of the Lusitania, torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1915, claimed the life of F.G. Naumann (amongst other things a patron of the Monte Carlo Tournament of 1902), reported The Chess Amateur of November 1915.
Dr. Tartakower Recovering
It will be remembered that Dr. Tartakower, the well-known chess player, who volunteered for service in the Austrian Army, and met with a severe accident resulting in concussion to the brain, is now stated to be recovering. It is reported that his brother (Dr. A. Tartakower) has been killed in action. The Chess Amateur May 1915
Casualties extremely heavy
"The Yorkshire Weekly Post" states that the well-known Bohemian chess masters Treybal and Kadera have been wounded, and Hromadka taken prisoner. Some time ago it was stated that Hrdina had been killed... The Chess Amateur May 1915
Another Chess Master in the Casualty List
This time in the ranks of the enemy, a chess player of reknown - John Szekely, the well-known Hungarian player - has been severely wounded when serving in the Austrian army...He is now in hospital. The Chess Amateur May 1915
Killed in Battle
The last number of the 'Deutches Woenschzach' (dated May 23rd)...announces the death in battle of Dr. Fritz Tarrasch,...he had been twice wounded and even decorated with the Iron Cross...he was a fine chess player...the sympathy of chess players everywhere will go out to his famous father, who has thus been unhappily bereaved of two sons during the past eventful war. The Chess Amateur  September 1915 quoting The New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Public School’s Brigade Chess
Mr S.W. Billings, home for Easter, informed us that there are a great number of chess-players in the Public School’s Brigade, four battalions…we take it that Mr Billings is the chess champion of the brigade. The Chess Amateur May 1915
But then...
S.W.Billings Killed
Mr. S.W. Billing has been killed while fighting in the ranks of the Universities and Public Schools’ Battalion. Mr. Billings was a regular competitor at annual national congresses of the British Chess Federation. The Chess Amateur July 1916
In Honour’s cause
We regret to notice that Captain Norman Annandale Black, R.F.A. has been killed in action….and like his father, he was a member of Glasgow Chess Club…he is [its] first member who is reported as having fallen in action. The Chess Amateur July 1916
Friedrich Köhnlein, born 12 December 1879 was a German chess master and problemist. He drew with Alekhine and Nimzowitch and beat Yates in the 1900s. He died in the Battle of the Somme in the 5th July 1916 (Wiki. Games here).
With regret we heard of the death of Mr F.H. Chubb, killed in action. He was one of the few strong chess players of North Gloucestershire, and had long been considered the best in Gloucester where he resided till he joined the army – the RGA….he was about 38.  The Chess Amateur August 1917
The son of Mr John A Guy of Bradford is posted as missing. He was for three years co-secretary of the Bradford Chess Club. His father and uncles are well known in northern chess circles. The Chess Amateur August 1917
Sec.-Lieut. R.H.V.Scott the well-known Metropolitan chess player has returned from France suffering from the effects of gas poisoning. Of course, everybody will wish him a speedy permanent recovery. The Chess Amateur  (date?)
 The matter of factness of the next one suggests that cock-ups came as no surprise...
Lieut G.F. Anderson
We are more than glad to hear that the report that Lt G.F. Anderson (last month) was incorrect. Mr. A. R. Cooper writing from Portsmouth says “ Lt. Anderson…is alive and well. I had a letter from him from France dated May 24th containing solutions to problems. He is a very clever composer. It was his brother that was killed. The Chess Amateur July 1918
Canadian chess player Frank Percival Benyon had held his own against Marshall and Janowski, but volunteered - and perished as war exhausted itself in September 1918 (see this piece by Olimpiu Urcan).

And so it went on...

All that wasted life is troubling enough, but the words of Corporal D. M'Arthur, chess champion of New South Wales give considerable pause, and an insight into how the war was experienced at the time by some serving soldiers. In September 1915, The Chess Amateur reported that M'Arthur had joined up with other chess-playing comrades from Australasia, and then in November 1915 it reproduced part of his letter to a friend in Melbourne. To me it is chilling, but not because of details of death and destruction in the trenches:
I am well satisfied. Ever since I enlisted I have been having the time of my life, and not once have I regretted the step that I have taken...It's a great life, and I would urge any eligible young man to come and join us. Personally I feel that ten years have been taken off my life. I have never been happier.
M'Arthur would later be decorated for conspicuous gallantry (The Chess Amateur January 1918).

This series finishes with a counterpoint to M'Arthur's enthusiasm (how to describe it: misguided? cavalier? blasé? heroic?) about the war. The salutary memorial in stone featured below is to the German fallen, but it speaks to all sides; and the evocation - by a modern-day poet - that frames it contains a passing chess allusion. Here chess transcends its mundane yet merciful role in the war as temporary escape or incidental pleasure, as seemingly good only for "whiling away the dull hours when we must needs stand by" (see note), and prompts reflections of a more enduring nature. The words are by Ruth Padel, speaking just this year:
Two giant granite figures on granite blocks - enormous Viking chess pieces - a man and a woman, kneeling side by side a little distance from each other, with folded arms, their backs to a beech hedge...
From Wikimedia Commons

...The man's head  is bare. He kneels upright, his fingers pressed under his arms. He is stiff. He is cold. He is holding himself in. The woman, covered, leans forward head and shoulders bent, swags of her robe dropping like tears. These figures are The Grieving Parents - monumental images of grief, but also of guilt and self-reproach for a generation which encouraged its sons to go to war. This cemetery, near Vladslo in Belgium ... holds the bones of 25,644 German soldiers. Each flat stone carries 20 names. The male figure gazes at the ninth stone, and the name of his son 'Peter Kollwitz'.
The sculpture is by Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945). Text is from Minds at War Episode 10: The Grieving Parents by Ruth Padel.  BBC Radio 3, 4 July 2014, as transcribed by MS.

The quote comes from Sgt. H. Allman, who'd learnt the game in uniform just three weeks previously: given by The Chess Amateur November 1915.

Links to War game, and War Game 2
History Index

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Monday, May 02, 2011

No Poker, Only work

The 15 days without poker left me with more time to sleep and sadly less urgency to leave work in time to register for the 7:20 (Pacific) Rush Super Turbo KO.

Eventually I will find another hobby and/or exercise more but last two weeks work has been busy as I am covering for co-worker who went to Mother-in-laws funeral (in Iran) so have departed closer to 9 each night.

The most important thing learned at work is that it may seem cool to name a project after a Marvel Comics theme but once you involve Canada trouble occurs.

There have been some holdups shipping from China to US and from US to Bangalore just because we put Project name on manifest.

Someone has some explaining to do to convince people that they really are just router boards rather than some mysterious Weapon X.

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Friday, March 14, 2008

Why I asked

The following a line and overlap wheel question.

First, yep people wreck on dirt, i have had and seen some good ones 2004'ish, Nova Desert Classic expensive shoulder dislocating otb. Ended up having a great season after that. 2005 Solitude, Cannondale low bottom bracket, trying to catch up with Sly on the DH, nose wheelie, lucky scrub oak landing, bent pedal axle, no major wounds.

But, unless you are T2 on the DH, you generally are not going 30mph, in a tight pack, where the slightest miscalculation can take you and many others out. Risk vs reward for me. I will say the RMR was excellent training, when i had the cahones to do it.

But i like dirt. Cause even if I am Off The Back, I can still have fun. Not so much when I have been dropped in a crit, which was often, cause I am dumb, impatient and scared.

But my point is, that shit happens in Crits, yeah Fox will say we attract it to us, or some shit like that, but shit happens. I know pack etiquette is to follow a line, point shit out and don't overlap the wheel of the person in front of you, but, to me, in a dynamic, high mph Crit, those things seem a bit more fluid, but i could be wrong, that is why i asked for veteran opinion.

I still don't understand how the RMR can be someone's focus, have large numbers and some of the weekend road races don't. But that is another discussion, well worn out one at that.

But, the Solitude Tuesday night series is back this year, with an even larger payout than last year, good raffle swag and hell i got 3rd in the series and won a couple hundred bucks.

Rico, Turbo come on out, get yer climb on, and listen to Alex carry on a conversation, behind you while you are dizzy from Hypoxia

Team Rico said...

Bob- I cant wait for Solitude. I'll be there for sure. I'm over RMR for the most part and that will give me my racing fix for Tuesday night. But I imagine it will be a while before that is rollin.
What happened to me last week was a lack of attention on anothers part and nothing more. Shit happens I'm all healed up and ready to kick some ass.

KanyonKris said...

I've thought of trying a crit - just to experience every type of cycling. But I've heard about too many wrecks and I'm too old to get busted up. Looks interesting, but not worth the risk for me. I've got no acceleration anyway.

Andy H. said...

To futher pimp the Solitude series not only did Bob take 3rd in the series and win coin but I took 3rd in the sport class and won coin as well. Bob winning cash is not suprising, he's fast. Me winning cash shows that everybody and anybody no matter how slow can come out and win some coin.

Team Rico said...

That's how the Canyon weekly dirt series used to be in Draper back in the day. I'm excited

Daren said...

Bob - I share the concern on crits, but somehow get myself out there 10 to 15 times a year. When we get close to cross season, it is the best training available. It made a huge difference for me last year. I think the risk is a bit over-blown. While there are a number of crashes each year, the number is surprisingly low given the number of racers, races and the speed. All that being said, I went down 6 years ago at RMR and ended up with a sweet Ti screw in my shoulder and 8 weeks without riding outdoors. I think I'll be at Solutide to get worked by the climbers a few times this year.


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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

A Friend With A Mission

Hi guys, just want to put in a plug for a friend who runs a great site. It's called Thyroid Diggers (We Dig for Thyroid Truths) and it's 100% dedicated to Thyroid Disease Awareness. Check it out please?

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I love comments. I won't lie about that!


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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

How To Dress Up A Poufy Skirt

A Poufy Skirt

Ultrafeminine full skirts are a big trend right now.....

1. Go Long: Look for ones that stop four inches below the knee...
2. Waist Not, Want Not:  To keep from getting lost in all that fabric, emphasize your waist.
3. Show Some Skin:  Skip stockings and tights a little flash of skin is a nice counterpoint
4. Get Some Height:  Heels are mandatory with this look, but that doesn't mean spindly stilettos.  Choose pumps with stacked heels, or consider kitten heels, this will give you a little lift.


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flowers bloom

"The most recent issue of W Asia tackles the environment with David Byun’s surrealistic shoot starring Viktoriya Sasonkina. Placed in a world of pollution and destruction, Viktoriya finds hope in a blooming flower and elegant ensembles styled by Daniela Jung." (sourced: Fashiongonerogue.com)

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Thanks for your lovely comments!


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Friday, 22 August 2014

Canadian Blogger Home Tours

Just wanted to share some awesome home tours of various Canadian bloggers that have been going on this week.  I'm so proud of all of these talented ladies!!!  Some of them I've followed for years, so I was glad to see them on the tour.  Here is just some of the talent out there.   You can link to all of the other homes on the tour at the bottom of each link.

I'm hoping to meet some of them at   BlogPodium on September 13, 2014, which is a Toronto conference for design and lifestyle bloggers.  This conference is for new bloggers (that would be me), seasoned bloggers or people just thinking about blogging.  It is filling up fast, so you better get your ticket if you're thinking about going.

AKA Design

Hope you enjoyed all of these home tours as much as I did.

Have a great weekend!!!!

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Get involved in the conversation.

Maggie Serota Maggie Serota

Videos: These Five Myth-Busting Musicians Are Making Good Music After They Got Sober

It may be true that alcohol and drugs can enhance an artist's creativity. But the equally popular belief that sobriety marks the end of great work, especially for musicians, is just plain false.

4 Substance

Popular mythology seems to dictate that drugs and booze drive the creative force even more than an actual innate talent does. How else would one explain a culture that continues to romanticize writers that drink themselves to death (Jack Kerouac, F. Scott Fitzgerald), and actors who meet untimely ends because of their hard living (River Phoenix, Brad Renfro, Philip Seymour Hoffman)?

However, musicians seem to be the biggest target for this belief. Some artists have even resisted getting clean because of the fear that drinking or using was necessary for the creative process. Here, people often cite David Bowie, who hit the height of his artistic output in the ‘70s when he was putting out bulletproof records on a diet of milk and cocaine. It was once he cleaned up that we were graced with the anti-climactic “Dancing in the Streets”/”Let’s Dance”/”Tin Machine” phase of his legacy.

Even a legitimate entertainment magazine like Entertainment Weekly could pose this question in a 2002 article “Can newly sober musicians make good music?” about the then Snoop Dogg/pre-Snoop Lion’s attempt to quit smoking weed.

Of course, there are also the confounding variables presented by Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and the other members of the so-called “27 Club” who passed away before they even had an opportunity to create art in sobriety.

In 2011, Flavorpill’s Tom Hawking argued that “musicians’ drug-taking coincides with the early stages of their career, and they often get clean at about the same stage they run out of ideas.” In other words, correlation between drug use and creativity doesn’t mean that drug use causes creativity. But try telling that to the guy with the blacklight posters of a dragon on his wall and the skull bong who won’t stop reminding you that Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister routinely drinks a bottle of whiskey a day.

However, not every artist who gets clean has a lifetime of mediocrity ahead of him or her. Here are good examples of musicians who went on to make significant and important work well after they kicked their habits.

Trent Reznor

Anyone who read rock magazines around the release of the 1994 Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral may remember Trent Reznor speaking candidly about the booze and coke bender he indulged in response to the death of his dog. Reznor’s self-medication extended well past the average pet mourning period until he finally sobered up in 2003.

I’m the first to admit that comparing any of the latter-day Nine Inch Nails albums to, say, 1990’s Pretty Hate Machine is a losing proposition. However, in sobriety, Reznor forged an interesting new path in his career. Along with his fellow How to Destroy Angels band member Atticus Ross, Reznor scored music for the David Fincher films, The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. He even racked up a Golden Globe, a Grammy and an Academy Award for his efforts.

It’s a little surreal to think that the angry guy in fishnet stockings stomping around a makeshift Thunderdome in the video for Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish” (see video below) would be addressed as “Academy Award Winner Trent Reznor” nearly 20 years later.

Bob Mould

Toward the end of his tenure as the frontman for the highly influential and highly dysfunctional punk trio Hüsker Dü, Mould retired to a Minnesota farmhouse where he effectively kicked a lifetime of drinking and drug abuse. Granted, he was only in his mid-20s and a “lifetime” meant a good 12 years or so of daily binge drinking with some speed thrown into the mix.

Still, getting sober didn’t hinder Mould’s ability to write a good song. After Hüsker Dü disbanded, Mould went on to form the trio Sugar and the band’s one and only full-length Copper Blue (see video below) went on become Mould’s most commercially successful record, in addition to being voted 1992 album of the year by NME.

Anyone who has given his 2012 solo record Silver Age a listen knows that entering his 50s hasn’t stopped Mould from putting out vital and anthemic guitar rock.

Sia Furler

Even if you don’t know Australian singer-songwriter Sia Furler’s name, chances are you’re intimately familiar with one of her songs. The bona fide hitmaker has written tracks for the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna and Britney Spears.

Before Furler became a major player behind the scenes, she had moderate success as a solo artist, recording and performing under her first name, Sia. Unfortunately, she didn’t take to the anxiety and lack of privacy that comes with being a public figure, in addition to battling addictions to both painkillers and booze, along with an autoimmune disorder called Graves’ disease. After a suicide attempt in 2010, Furler eventually sought help via 12-step programs.

Although Furler is a respected and successful producer and songwriter, it’s in sobriety that she re-emerged as a solo artist. Her 2014 single “Chandelier” was a critical and commercial smash earning the singer her first Hot 100 chart appearance where she was billed as the artist. She also co-directed the innovative music video (see below) that practically smashed the Internet.

Ghostface Killah

In both his solo work and his work with the Wu-Tang Clan, drugs featured heavily in both Ghostface’s creative process and his lyrical content.

A few years before the release of 2006 Fishscale, Ghostface got sober, most notably quitting weed. Although there was some debate over whether his religious conversion or battle with diabetes inspired him to clean up his act, the fact remains that he emerged from his smoke cloud to record an album that caused critics to laud Fishscale (see video below) as the creative pinnacle of his career. In addition to topping many of the year’s best albums lists, the album was also a commercial juggernaut, debuting at no. 4 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Although Ghostface didn’t actually use drugs to make the album, they still act as a muse for his work as most of his rhymes revolve around the black market drug economy with the album’s title referencing a block of uncut cocaine.

Richard Thompson

Although Richard Thompson never quite became a household name, the guitar virtuoso and folk pioneer has created a vast body of work that is both highly influential and critically lauded. He’s also legitimately one of the best guitar players in the world, hands down. Thompson’s solo work, as well as his recordings with the group Fairport Convention and his duo with ex-wife Linda Thompson, have earned him a massive cult following. Also, his songs have been covered by the likes of David Gilmour and Bonnie Raitt.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Thompson got booze and drugs out of his system early. At just 24, Thompson quit drinking, long before he would record some of his most important work, like the landmark 1982 Richard and Linda Thompson album Shoot Out the Lights (see video below).

Maggie Serota is Staff Editor at Death and Taxes and has written for Men’s Health, Refinery 29, New York Observer, Buzzfeed, The A.V. Club, Wondering Sound and a number of other fine publications. She was once yelled at by Glenn Danzig on behalf of the Village Voice. Maggie lives in Queens, NY with Oscar the cat.


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Blog tagged “post”

Sugai Solutions to Stress & Value Determination Process

April 08, 2014

In this video, I share how The Demartini Value Determination Process (visit Dr. Demartini’s official page here) is a key exercise in understanding & mastering stress. Your Value System, also known as The Hierarchy of Values is key to knowing who you are, why you make your decisions, and how to understand & communicate with others. It is one of the most key components to understanding human behavior.

We experience perceptions of stress & pain when our values are being challenged, and pleasure when our values are being supported. Knowing what is your highest values are and in what order of priority they are is key to understanding and mastering your behavior and your perceptions.

For an easier experience in completing an exercise, I created a custom fill in sheet. Download here.

Download the official Demartini Value Determination Process by visiting Dr. Demartini’s website.


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Saturday, November 28, 2009

On Being Invisible

Today I wanna talk about something that I've thought a lot about as I creep through my 40's. Hmmm. Perhaps "creep" is the wrong verb. Maybe I'd feel better if I were strutting through my 40's. Not to get sidetracked and turn this into a semantic issue or anything.... but aging.. when it's not driving us all bananas (what with the creaks and the sagging and all the other stuff that comes with it), well there are some shiny bits to consider along with the cruddy ones. The topic of aging has come up a couple of times recently in conversation and I thought I'd expound a bit on an earlier post I wrote about the vilification of aging.

I was never one who banked on her looks. I just never had that kind of cachet. I was plump and a bit geeky looking. So I sort of spent my youth developing my brain and a sense of humour. And working up the courage to wear cocktail dresses with Doc Martens. And trying to duck the kind of all consuming paranoia that comes with being young and insecure.

Do you remember the paranoia that comes with being 15 or 16? You know the scene: you're walking down the street and suddenly you notice a group of teenagers. They are very cool. You recognize this particular flavour of cool because you are not like them. Not. One. Bit. Nope - YOU are awkward and have a bad hair cut, a terrible body image and tinted aviator glasses. The group laughs. You blush and pop into a sweat because you are PRETTY CERTAIN they are laughing at you. You become uncomfortable and want to cross the street, but wouldn't that make your fear and insecurity even more obvious THAN IT ALREADY IS? So you white knuckle it and attempt to breeze on by them. It is hard. Breezing is not something you do well (unless it's in a revenge fantasy.....) You would give ANYTHING to have this moment be over.

And then, you're in your 40's. You are still plump and geeky. But you have come to understand that there are SO MANY THINGS IN LIFE that are more important than not looking like a super model! And about 75% of the time, you are so comfortable in your skin. You don't really GIVE a rat's ass about all that other stuff (except for 25% of the time when, despite all efforts, you succumb to the GRAND NARRATIVE served up by the media and realize that you do not resemble the heroine of this narrative in any way, shape or form.)

Something else happens when you hit your 40's - suddenly, you are vested with a super power!!! Yes!! You become INVISIBLE to most of the world. Maybe this sounds negative, but I have to tell you that it is KIND OF LIBERATING!!! Maybe it's harder for women who WERE able to leverage their looks, but for most of us, the invisibility thing is a breath of fresh air. At least it is for me. I know that I could SERIOUSLY go out wearing my pj bottoms (the ones with the teddy bear astronauts on them), and no one would give me a second look. And I gotta say. I like it! Violet Parr from The Incredibles: you never knew how good you had it!

So now when I see young women struggling in public spaces, I just wanna go over and give them a hug and tell them "there there - this will all end soon. And THEN you can look forward to the aging... and even though you'll get creaky and sprout chin whiskers, YOU TOO WILL BE INVISIBLE. You will finally have that secret super power you've always longed for. And let me tell you little sister - it is so very liberating."

  1. What I find sad is that with all your wisdom, learned experience and knowlege, now more than ever you should be becoming more visible. Unfortunately most of the world looks on aging through "youth coloured glasses" and not with wisdom "goggles".

    I guess I am embracing aging in the same way you are describing but I am seeking out others ahead of me on the journey to learn from and now see visibility in a different way.

    There is a liberty in that which you describe, that being off the "treadmill" as it were. In that I am able to focus on things that are much more important than myself and my vanity.

  2. Such wise words - all of them. You're so right about the glasses through which we see the world. I wonder how different our world would be if we all donned the wisdom "goggles" for a day?

    The liberty part of this is great, but you're right - the price is kinda off the map because we're too busy looking backwards.....

  3. i was once at lunch with an engineer who, after an unsucessful flirt with the waitress sighed and said "it's no fun being invisible to these girls". but he's 60ish, hitting on 20ish women, it's not the same, just creepy


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Japan's Kaori Icho (R) tussles with Petra Olli of Finland in the women's 58-kilogram division final at the world wrestling championships in Las Vegas on Sept. 10, 2015. Icho won the match to claim her 10th world title. (Kyodo via AP Images)
With wrestling set to make its reintroduce itself to the world at the Rio Olympics, international federation president Nenad Lalovic penned a letter of thanks to the sport's community.
The International Olympic Committee booted wrestling from the program three years ago, beginning with the Tokyo Games in 2020. The move forced wrestling to make a number of tweaks to appeal to modern viewers while adding a pair of women's weight classes to address gender equity concerns.
The IOC voted wrestling back into the Olympics just six months after dropping the sport.
Lalovic, who was named the interim president less than a week after the IOC's decision in 2013 and later took over on a permanent basis, proved to be crucial in helping steer the sport through the most difficult time in its long history.
"We have all worked hard to get back to this point and I now leave it in your hands to show the world the beauty of competition, the beauty of wrestling and the beauty of the Games," Lalovic wrote in a letter posted Saturday.
The full letter can be viewed on United World Wrestling's website:
The Olympic wrestling tournament begins on August 14.


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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

squierrl chatter—
my old dog rolls
to her left side

- dustin neal

Blogger texas haijin said...

i love writing haiku about summer. actually, i love the haiku that comes to me during summer. last summer is when i really became serious about haiku. this is somewhat of an anniversary for me.

some may think this is a simple image, but i think something deeper rests in this haiku. i know and see it. however, you may or may not. consider the "blind dog" haiku the other day. our dog knows death is coming soon, which is in this haiku. she is a fox terror squirrel dog. she hasn't chased a squirrel in years.

also, a post about my haiku may seem arrogant. however, after keeping in touch with ed markowski, an awesome haiku poet, i have began looking deep within my own haiku to see exactly what rests in those three lines, what rests past the simple image.

i hope you do the same.

i've been enjoying the haiku that's been posted by you guys and gals. i hope to respond to peoples' haiku on a daily basis. maybe i'll be a good moderator for this blog.

okay, i've ranted long enough.

12:50 PM

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Creative Commons License
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. In other words, you can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it, and as long as you give me credit.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Proposed names for musical groups

For no particular reason, here are some proposed names for musical groups. Help yourself, if you need a name:

Fully Clothed Mole Rats

Trash Can Liners

Undersized Load

Charmless Quarks

Chartreuse Crush

Conversion Factors

Pounds per Kilometer

Abscessed Molars

Stupidity Teeth

Medium-sized Bang

Coalition of the Unwilling

Non-Garden Salad

Second Navel

Fifty Percent On

Three-way Traffic

Top-Secret Mulch

Excess Shortage

Vast Minority

Of course, being totally out of touch with popular music, one or all of these may be taken. I plead ignorance, and request that any infringement issues be directed to my lawyer.

No doubt you can come up with some better suggestions. Feel free to comment.

Thanks for reading.

Keetha said...

OK - - - this is cracking me up. I read them out to Greg who said, "His brain has to be working all the time"

Happy New Year!!

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks to both of you. Enjoy the party!

Weekend Fisher said...

I once heard the suggestion "Free Beer". (Picture the sign in front of the venue where they're playing.) h/t Emma Bull, _War for the Oaks_ (a great read, btw).

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks, weekend fisher.

Don said...

There actually was a band called "Free Beer." They figured it would be the phrase most likely to draw an audience.

Martin LaBar said...

Thanks, Don. I'm not surprised.


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Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Sunspots 338

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
Science: Karl Zimmer has posted the winners of a science movie festival.

Politics: (or Philosophy) PETA plans to take Sea World to court, on the grounds that dolphins under their care, and displaying as an attraction for customers, are being held in slavery.

Christianity:  Russell Purvis challenges our thinking on how to explain and understand salvation.

Image source (public domain)

atlibertytosay said...

I think it can be easily argued that thousands of children became interested in sea life because of the wonders of SeaWorld.

Captivity is not the same thing as slavery when applied to animals and fish ~ I haven't decided on birds.

Martin LaBar said...

I believe in human supremacy, which should be careful, and does allow us to use other mammals (and birds) in various ways. This doesn't allow senseless cruelty to animals, which is spoken against in the Bible.

Not all the ways that we use animals are legitimate. I'm not sure how well dolphins are treated at Sea World. They are known to be highly intelligent, perhaps even having a language equivalent to ours.


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Lilypie Maternity tickers

Lilypie Maternity tickers

Saturday, November 3, 2012

To my fellow Surrogates....(and anyone that cares to read this)

As you know from reading my blog this is the second surrogacy I have done and with those surrogacies I have dealt with the highs and the lows. I really try not to write about the lows but I really feel this is one that needs to be brought up.
I want to talk about those crazy hormones that we deal with. We deal with them when we give ourselves the medications to get our body ready for pregnancy, we deal with them while we are pregnant and we deal with them after we have the baby. The hormones you deal with while taking the medications and while pregnant are not fun but there is a pregnancy or upcoming pregnancy to be happy about. The hormones you deal with after having the baby are the ones I want to talk about.

When I did my first surrogacy a few days after having the baby I was a wreck, (no holding back, I'm throwing it all out there). I cried, felt gloomy, didn't want to be alone and moped around. Now let me just say those emotions are not me at all. I hardly cry, or show extreme emotion (ask my friend who calls me the ice queen), I am laid back, a generally happy person. So these extreme emotions threw me for a loop. I thought I was a terrible surrogate for feeling this way. After a day of feeling like this I called another surrogate friend who had had a surrogate baby a few weeks before me and broke down and told her "I am a terrible surrogate" and you know what she told me "That happened to me too"!And so I replied with a "What the heck, why is no one telling us that we would/could go through this". After hearing from her and another surrogate I contacted, I realized it happens quite often and IT WAS TOTALLY NORMAL!

 During this crazy time for me I questioned myself; Was I sad the baby was going home with the parents-NO, was I sad I didn't have a baby-NO, what I WAS sad about was the feeling that the surrogacy was over. For months (10+) your life is consumed with the surrogacy process and being pregnant. You have people ask about your story, you have the IPs caring about you and your pregnancy, you have a new group of surrogate friends among all the other joys of being pregnant. And then bam you have the baby and it feels like all of that is over. I was lucky enough to have IPs who told me " It is not over but only the beginning for all of us". To this day I carry those words with me for both of my surrogacies.

So to all you Surrogates I want to say IT IS COMPLETELY NORMAL to have your hormones be out of whack after having the baby. And just because they are, does NOT mean you wanted to have the baby. What really helped me was talking to another surrogate while I was feeling down, sometimes friends that have never been surrogates just do not understand.

Yes, these darn hormones snuck up on me again after this last surrogacy, but I had surrogate friends who were there for me and listened to me and actually got to hear me cry ;)

 These whacky hormones don't last for a long time, and before you know it you will be back to your old self, I promise!

To anyone who knows me and is reading this....I am here for you if you ever need to talk. :)

Alison said...

You are such a wonderful person, surrogate and friend! Love this post! : )

Anonymous said...

Thank you Alison, I appreciate that!


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Release Notes for Papers 3 - version 3.2.8 (262) beta

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