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Anyone finding entertainment in this blog will be questioned; anyone finding
grammatical errors will be prosecuted; anyone finding value will be banished.
- with thanks to Mark Twain
Blog Being an occasional listing of personal occupations. Some entries have titles that are linked to most of the content. 
My favorite photo of one of my favorite subjects
Sunday, February 12, 2012 An ol' saddle pard, photographer Walter Gundy, just sent me a digital copy of a shot he took in early 1977. He tells me that he used a "Nikon F or F2 35mm SLR camera, probably 85mm/1.8 lens." I recall that there was some glare on my nose, so he put some powder on it. That was the only occasion when I have had anything like make-up on, Halloween face paint excepted. The lower hair is wavy because I had just taken it out of a pigtail, which was my customary coif then. I do not recall why a cane was used as a prop.  Walter trained with very high-end photographer George Schiavone in Miami years ago. His portraits are keepers, as evidenced by the samples on his modest website, waltergundy.com, which we updated last Tuesday.
The same year that Walter took this shot, he was restoring old photos for the S & S Restaurant in Inman Square, which were the first that began the collection now decorating the dining rooms. Also that year, he directed the first laser show in Boston, "Lovelight," at the Hayden Planetarium of the Museum of Science. Walter has shared with me hundreds of fascinating, personal anecdotes, starting with the folk-rock scene in Greenwich Village in the early 1960's, many about famous people. A few of them are publicly repeatable. One day I would like to publish them in this space. Wild Kingdom in Plymouth, Massachusetts? Friday, February 3, 2012 
Today I was standing in a clearing, facing a pond a few dozen yards away, in Plymouth. With the sun low to my left at four o'clock, a bald eagle glided along the shoreline at treetop level, perfectly illuminated, all stretched out right in front of me. It was probably the most surprising view of nature —and certainly one of the most beautiful— these eyes have ever witnessed.
A few minutes later, shooting from the hip, I managed to get off a very bad shot that caught evidence of a hawk —could it be an adolescent eagle?— that followed the same route. In the detail at right, one can make out the end feathers of the right wing. At seven o'clock, coyotes were whooping it up about three or four hundred yards away. I enjoy tremendously the perquisites attendant upon my hobbies of fishing, woodcutting, and plain sylvan loitering. 
Grandpêre et Moi
Groundhog Day, 2012 A hundred years ago, Edward Curtis roamed the Northwest documenting native peoples, taking photographs and making wax cylinder recordings. I like his pictures and for forty years have kept on my wall an old and stained print of his "The Chief at Klamath Falls." A clean copy is at right. Yesterday, a generous chum doubled my collection. He bought a copy of Curtis' photo of Lahkeudup of the Skokomish, taken in 1912. He acquired it for me because he saw a family resemblance to my own partly native self. Working alone today with a shutter remote, I tried, optimistically, to replicate the shot. The result was disappointing, and it fails to illustrate what is, in the flesh, a stronger resemblance. 
Karma? What karma? Monday, December 19 I hear folks ask, "Why do good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people?" The question has never bothered me, but I do have a similar problem: Why do some things happen to other people and other things happen to some people? (I think Steven Wright might know, but I probably have Steven wrong.) Saw that one coming... Thursday, December 15, 7:30 PM About forty-five minutes ago, I drove down Broadway, in the dark and in light rain, and was surprised to see a new traffic island dividing the road in front of the high school —with no signage whatever. I was confident that there was a very strong likelihood that, especially if the rain picked up, someone would flip a cab or something there tonight. I continued on my very brief errand and went by the spot again a few minutes later. When I got home, less than a mile away, I went to my basement to collect a traffic cone I had down there. I came upstairs and called the Cambridge Police communications officer to apprise him of the dangerous situation; he told me he would pass it on to public works. I then immediately got into my car with said cone and drove to the island. The firetrucks beat me to it (but I was ahead of the squad car.) There was a wrinkled minivan sitting astride the island and a very rattled woman sitting on the stone bench beside the road. I guess I should have driven straight home when first I saw the problem. Rin Tin Tin Saturday, November 19, 2011 To make a long story short, I like dogs more than people, and I just found a terrific book.  To make a short story long, a long, long time ago I tuned in, turned on, and dropped out; then I crashed with some fellow UMass '71 dropouts, Cyndi and Elaine, who had a place in Cambridge. Cyndi had a dog named Jackson, and I liked Jackson a lot. I think I might have been walking Jackson when Armstrong set foot; I know that I babysat him while Cyndi hitchhiked to Woodstock. (By the way, I got a first-hand report about that subsequently romanticized event from her: "It was a mess; it was rainy.") I liked the companionship of Jackson so much that I decided that I would get my own dog as soon as I got my own place.
A couple of days after I got my own paid-for spot in an apartment that fall, I put out my thumb on Mass. Ave. to catch a ride to the regular Sunday music and culture festival on Cambridge Common. A convertible pulled over; they were going there to find a new home for this gorgeous little German Shepherd named Poobah, whom I immediately adopted and renamed Hund. Hund and I grew very close and nearly inseparable. Our friendship passed in a time when I could take her to the grocery store; to the bars (where I would put my ragged jacket on the floor under my stool or bench, so that she could lie down in the comfort of knowing I wouldn't leave without my jacket); to the dentist (I am not making this up.) And, yes, she did perform the classic function of preventing a mugging on at least one clear-cut occasion and, I am sure, many unknown occasions. She wandered off one night when I left her alone. Like anyone else, I used to have unpleasant dreams about some aspect or other of the vicissitudes of my life. Nightmares stopped as I got older and tougher. The last bad dreams to leave my sleeptime were those about Hund's disappearance. Such a circumstance may or may not reveal too much of my psychological health, but I offer it as evidence of the extent to which I like dogs. Although modern city dogs are very different from the critters we knew forty years ago, e.g., they are now genderless, I seem to have considerable company nowadays among the general populace in my canine affinities.  There is a good reason people like dogs. Most familiar farm animals were domesticated about ten thousand years ago. Dogs were domesticated sometime between a hundred thousand and thirty thousand years ago —and they are still not farm animals, so elemental is their symbiotic relationship with humans. I therefore claim that I am not too nuts to like dogs as much as I do. I don't keep one anymore, because I couldn't keep one the way they're kept these days in the city, as pets rather than as adjuncts. However, I do carry MilkBone with me, and most of the dogs in my neighborhood react when they see or hear me. (Some know the sound of my housekeys, and some know the sound of my car door!)
Did I mention that I am making a short story long? Hund was a shepherd. She was so smart that she would challenge any man who came to my home to visit, and, when a woman came, she would jump on me. Smart and highly devoted dogs, German Shepherds, and still my favorite breed. I was excited when I heard that Susan Orlean was working an a book about the most famous German Shepherd of them all. Then Wednesday night, there she was on this edition of The Colbert Report talking about her Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. As a fan of Golden Era Hollywood, I have always known that Rinty was a superstar, but Ms. Orlean's revelations about him during the Colbert interview made the book irresistible. I was glad to find a copy today at the Harvard Bookstore. (Click link for availability at the store.) Who'd a thunk there'd be copies left, after that interview, in the middle of this dog-nutty town? Really DELIcious Friday, November 18, 2011 Stopped today for sandwiches and such at a place that I had not visited since the greybeard owner's hair was black. I was ebullient that the place is everything and more than I had remembered. Barry's Village Deli in Waban is the real deal, as far as this gentile can figure. The Rachel's pastrami with Russian dressing was just between "Yes, I'd be willing to die happily of a heart attack from a superabundance of these!" and "Well, no, I won't get circumcised to get more." I brought back to Cambridge some latkes for a client who has more experience than I with delicatessen fare, and she averred that they were the best she had ever had. If one ventures near the Waban neighborhood of Newton, one should seek this spot, if only for its ethnic genuineness, if not for its otherworldly Rachel sandwich. Please excuse the title of this little entry. It was inspired by an old photograph I once saw of a roadside store in an area of the South where it was illegal to advertise that alcohol was offered. On the side of the building was an humongous sign reading, "COLD BEvERages." Not Enough Trout Sunday, November 13, 2011 I have not gone fishing since last spring. I theorize that that is why I have not written anything here lately. It is said that fish is brain food, and apparently my lack of trout has left me bereft of the writing habit. Also, there has not been much to relate to my friends; I worked a bit too much painting interiors for the first couple of months of summer. The entire recreational part of the season comprised little more than two four-day outings in August. The first trip was to attend a wedding in deepest, darkest Maine, at which I served as volunteer photographer. Of the 700 snapshots I took, there is probably only this one to which I can point with some pride. I am not skilled in photography, but I am very persistent, and sometimes persistence will pay off. To my surprise, I was the only attendee at the ceremony with a necktie. While I was there, I came to understand why there is a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF.) Those three ostensibly disparate things are certainly alloyed in great abundance up in the deep woods, but I wonder why Trucks are not included. It should be "Tobacco, Trucks, Alcohol, and Firearms," in that order. 
The second trip was to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont for some recreational landscaping. Here I am in front of an apple tree that has not been tended for a hundred years. As far as I am concerned, this is the loveliest area on earth.
That was it for summer. To say goodbye to the season, I took a daytrip to the Connecticut Valley for leaf-peeping, thinking I might be too late on the ninth of October. I was startled by the dearth of color. Here is a shot upriver from the French King Bridge. More recently I have resumed my hobby of woodcutting. While doing so, the week before last, I was reminded of the way of all flesh. I had earlier placed a bunch of logs at the foot of a big pine tree. On this afternoon, I spent a couple of hours ferociously sawing and splitting them with a chainsaw, a big axe, a splitting wedge, and a couple of bow saws. When I got myself tuckered out and began putting the tools away, I noticed something peculiar about the spot where I had been noisily and violently toiling. This video suggests what a lucky guy I am. Knock on wood. "Monsieur Chuck always breengs eez own." Thursday, June 16, 2011 In some mostly forgotten Golden Era Hollywood movie, a restaurant patron is seen eating something that is unavailable to the other patrons, unavailable because of local economics or wartime rationing or some other reason. Another patron asks the restaurateur how it is that that customer is served that particular rare morsel. The restaurateur replies, "Monsieur (So-and-So) always breengs eez own." I relived that scene many times in the 1990's. 
There used to be a place in Inman Square called Daddy-O's, where grilled trout was a menu staple. One of the two chef-owners did the grill work, and he grilled about fifty trout per week. He was very, very good at what he did. No matter how I tried, I could not cook one of my trout to taste anything like the sublime results of his attention.
Somehow I managed to connive a relationship with this generous chef such that I would bring my own trout to the restaurant and he would grill them for me. I would walk in and ask, "Any room on the grill?" and, if there was, I would bring my freshly caught trout, always much bigger than the ten-ounce standards that were being fired over Canadian hickory charcoal. This place had an open kitchen, and startled custormers would gaze at a monstrous two-and-a-half-pound trout on the grill and ask, "What is that!?" My beloved chef would reply simply, "Monsieur Lapointe always breengs eez own." Today that chef's sons are young men. When I ran across one of them, Chuck, recently, I ask him if he would care to join me in a fishing outing sometime. He answered in the affirmative. On Tuesday I brought to their home my catch of the day, which included three rainbows, one of which measured a very thick 16-1/2" and was the third-biggest trout I have ever caught. Chuck became even more enthusiastic, so when I ask him to join me today he did. The limit in Massachusetts is three per angler, and we got our six. There are five lovely rainbows and a beautiful brown trout. Chuck got that one, the last catch and the biggest. —And he has fully qualified assistance to prepare it. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" Saturday, May 28, 2011 Just came across this article announcing the passing of Gil Scott-Heron. As I have been doing the last two months, I had been scanning the big news outfits for reports about events in Libya (especially Misrata, which seems to me to be the linchpin of the revolution there.) I ran across that article; the name sounded familiar; and the phrase "godfather of rap" got my attention. He was, I have just learned, the writer of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." I was living at 54 Green Street at the corner of Blanche (Neither address nor corner are extant.) when that "song" or poem was released. It made a great deal of sense to me. 
It posited that stopping the war and the concomitant racism would not be accomplished by liberals sitting on their couches watching television to determine the truth of 1960's history. The truth of the pseudo-musical piece was borne out by events. The victims of the Kent State Massacre (white victims) paid the price and saved this country from a far worse fate of more riots and class warfare, such as has happened, for example, when Russians had had enough and as is happening in the Arab Spring.
Don't know nuthin bout rap; think it's all crap. No music; not much sense. And the purveyors seem pretty fuckin dense. —And musically impaired and therefore not something to be placed under the rubric "music." However, when the '60's were turning into the '70's, when that song was released, it sounded to me a lot like the truth of the matter. As stated, I was living at the corner of Green and Blanche Streets. I remember looking out my third-floor bedroom window at night and seeing Cambridge police marching in formation, four abreast, around the front and side of the three-decker in which my peacenik self was spying in trepidation. In retrospect, I suppose that there may have been no particular reason that they were marching around my corner but that the police station happened to be located at the corner of Green Street and Western Avenue, and it was just, perhaps, a convenient place to drill. But why at night? Scary stuff! Also at that corner I had found a bundle of Black Panther newspapers, which expounded on such topics as the importance of killing one hundred before they got you and about the value of an M-16. Thus, I still do not know just why I saw those cops doing that on that night. Later that spring some white kids were shot to death in the good ole US of A —not on TV like Vietnam— and things started to change. The change was not just some theoretical or philosophical shift for me; I had already been dodging the draft for a couple of years. Fifty-four Green Street was the last address that I reported to the Selective Service System. I was prime meat at the height of the Vietnam War, and, if I had been living almost anywhere but the zany world of Cambridge, I would have some very less tolerable memories of my twenties. Scott-Heron's poetry gave my difficult situation, the robbery of my youth, a political perspective. It also helped me to understand how much I had to learn to overcome my own racism. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" remains a very entertaining poem for those of us who know the contemporary references and an historical landmark for many of us —black and white; cop and protester; vet and dodger— who navigated those tempests.
From Craig Hollingsworth of UMass Extension: "The tick that you submitted tested negative for presence of Borrelia burgdorferi, the organism that causes Lyme disease." What's Up With That? Saturday, May 14, 2011 Saw something somewhat memorable while driving down the Southeast Expressway this morning. This pickup had very unusual occupants. 
Three large, robust, and apparently quite contented sheep were gazing out the back window. 
Rainbow Trout Wednesday, May 4, 2011 (second entry today) The first picture below is of the single trout I caught yesterday. The second is of the three that I caught today. The last fish that I hauled in was the big one, measuring sixteen and a half inches. Because of the nearly constant rain that I was enduring to bag my limit, because of the fact that it came last, and because it was the biggest I have brought in in a long time, it was an especially thrilling catch. It is baking as I write. In a few minutes, I will eat the whole thing—if I can; I am out of practice eating sixteen-inch trout! 
An Argument for Cursive Writing Wednesday, May 4, 2011 My response to an article in the New York Times. Osama bin Laden Monday, May 2, 2011 One thing keeps coming up in my head today: I imagine what it would be like to be a particular Navy Seal today (assuming the shooter was human and not robotic.) People who want to do that have a great hunger for intensity, for dominance, and, if they are remotely qualified to be candidates for the job, for excellence. To such a person, to a Navy Seal, what could possibly better represent validation and victory than putting a bullet into Bin Laden's head? The guy who did that must feel like he just quarterbacked a Super Bowl victory, got elected President, and walked on the moon all at once. It must be an extremely satisfying feeling. The downside is that he probably won't be able to tell anybody about it for a long, long time. It's like catching the world's biggest fish and not being able to tell one's fishing buddies. Only the folks on scene can know. I hope and presume that he's hard enough that he doesn't care. Postscript May 3 Just read an article in the Washington Post that corroborates my simile for what the shooter felt. Former SEAL Richard Marcinko is quoted as saying, "This is playing in the Super Bowl and getting the Oscar all in one breath." Brown Trout Saturday, April 23, 2011 Among the three (state limit) trout I caught this morning was this approximately 13" brown trout, probably the prettiest fish I've caught in many years. 
Reading about the Pacific War Friday, April 15, 2011 Last night I finished reading Evan Thomas' Sea of Thunder, a monumental piece of research that explains the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle in history, with personal stories of some of the more important participants.  At the beginning of his course "The Pacific War," Harvard's Dennis Skiotis told us that that war was a fight between the US and two enemies: the Japanese and Douglas MacArthur. Sea of Thunder explains much about the war, and, in particular and in detail, it illustrates the lunacy of divided command. It took hours for US commanders around Leyte to send and receive —out of order— urgent messages.
The book also illustrates, almost accidentally it seems, the danger of mythologizing commanders for the sake of morale on the home front. Admiral Halsey was buffered against the reasonable second-guessing of his deadly mistakes in communications and in tactics; apparently this protection of his reputation was maintained simply for purposes of morale in the US and in the war theatres. While Halsey's greatness was not as fictive as was MacArthur's, he was not nearly as courageous, intelligent, or even skillful as were some of the men whom his blunders sent to foolish deaths. One cannot with honesty completely blame Halsey for steaming in the wrong direction in the waters east of the Phillipines. After all, it is amazing how regularly battles in the Pacific were won by whichever side had the more aggressive commander, and Halsey was aggressive. However, one cannot excuse his tolerance of a communication system (born of the division of command between Nimitz and MacArthur) that was so useless (or much worse than useless) when it was most needed. Evidence that Halsey's failures are unforgivable lies in the fact that he apparently never forgave himself. The book, published about five years ago, has some minor editorial flaws that one hopes have been or will be tidied. Also, after finishing it, I am not quite sure to which commanders the subtitle "Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign" refers. (This problem is probably mine.) That said, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any student of the Pacific War or anyone who desires an understanding of the phrase "the fog of war." Dar al-Islam Leapfrogs Renaissance and Scientific Revolution Thursday, March 31, 2011 I have very rarely been able to follow current events, because what humans do to each other appalls me. I have read the media (I have almost never watched television news.) only during the McGovern-Nixon campaign in '72, during the Obama-McCain campaign, and during the current Arab Awakening. Not since the '60's have I witnessed such a blossoming of human potential. What is happening in the Dar al-Islam right now might objectively be counted even more significant than the revolution in shared consciousness that happened across the West in the '60's. Why is the Arabian Awakening more important? Because it is being prosecuted not by youngsters as fortunately positioned in history as I and my generation have been but by youngsters who have very little to work with besides the consciousness-fomenting internet. The semi-educated kids driving back and forth along the coastal highway of Libya look plenty foolish firing their guns into the air for Western cameras, but, when we changed the rules in the Western world in the '60's, we had mostly just batons, beatings, and prisons to stop us — not our governments' artillery, tanks, etc. Also — and more impressively — we were generally not particularly hungry and did not have so far to go in terms of cultural development or political representation. The Arab Awakening is leapfrogging the Renaissance, the Inquisition, and the Enlightenment and jumping right into modern liberalism (for which I have an extremely strong distaste, but that's another story.) It would be fair rebuttal to point to the Arab world's importance to the Renaissance and to the fact that a state like Iran is arguably a Moslem Inquistion, but what is addressed here is the suddenness of the jump forward in social development. When I have noticed the barbarism of such practices as the beheading of men or the stoning of women for allegations of adultery, I have told myself that it is a case of the Arab world's lagging behind the West by five hundred years. Five hundred years ago, Western Civilization was burning individuals for publicly disseminating their original thoughts; the West has made some significant, albeit sluggish, progress. Now I see a lot of catching-up in the Mideast. —And a society, any student of history will avow, that catches up often surpasses. It is not likely, but it is just possible that social structures about to come into being in some parts of the Dar al-Islam will be more just and reasonable than any political structure on earth since the anarchic tribal systems (now long since brushed aside by what we call civilization) toward which we all, in our deepest, most secret dreams, aspire. GoDaddy Servers Down 3:15 AM, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 Just noticed that at this moment the GoDaddy website is down, along with some (or all?) websites that they host, including some that I write, e.g., YogaOfEnergyFlow.com. To use the Joe Biden's phrase, "This is a big ******* deal!" GoDaddy is a major player in domain registration and hosting. Postscript 3:29 AM The outage apparently lasted about fifteen minutes. Postscript 3:39 AM GoDaddy and hosted sites are down again. I would like to follow up, but time to go back to bed! 
Trout Fishing 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011 Yesterday I caught my first trout of the season, four rainbows. (Since the legal limit is three, I released the fourth, which showed up while I was packing up my tackle.) The very first was the best, and I gave it to chef Jason Bond, who specializes in the use of fresh, locally sourced foods. He is owner of Bondir. Last night this photo (reproduced here without permission!) appeared on the restaurant's Facebook page. I am so pleased that this beautiful animal is getting the cooking it deserves. I am also pleased that its innards were not wasted yesterday, as this couple can attest. 
Raffle of Red Sox Tix for Family in Medical Distress — Ends Sunday
Friday, March 18, 2011 Dear friend Debbie asked me to participate in a raffle to help out a family with a young man who is quite sick and who has no health insurance. The raffle is for a pair of opening day Red Sox tickets; the drawing is being held this Sunday, the twentieth. I kicked in with $10 for three raffle tickets. To participate in the raffle, click here; for more information, click here. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (One People, One Nation, One Leader —the rallying cry of Nazism.) Friday, March 18, 2011 Want to see something really scary? A few minutes ago, I was scanning for news about Libya, going through my regular circuit of late that comprises BBC, Al Jazeera, Washington Post, and New York Times. When I clicked my link to the Post, the website was down. Startled, I wanted to check that something very, very bad had not just happened in Washington, so I googled "washington dc" to see if other local sites were down. The first link I clicked was to the official website for the city, DC.GOV. The top of the website reads, "The District of Columbia 'One City, One Government, One Voice'" on the left, and on the right is the name and photo of the mayor. 
St. Patrick's Day and the Secret Password Thursday, March 17, 2011 During the '90's, I took a couple of courses on the history of Boston at Harvard Extension School, taught by Boston College Professor Emeritus & University Historian Thomas O'Connor. 
When he got to the history of Irish ascendancy in Boston politics, I asked if Evacuation Day had ever been celebrated before Irishmen took over Boston politics. (In 1906 "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald was elected the first Irish mayor of Boston —and later gave his name to a presidential grandson.)
Evacuation Day, unknown in the rest of the United States, was the day in 1776 that the British left Boston Harbor. The night before, General Washington had sneaked cannon up to the Dorchester Heights overlooking the harbor, which cannon gave the British the motivation to board their ships and to quit the vicinity. It became a legal holiday in Greater Boston in 1901, coincidentally at the same time that Irishmen were first taking over the local Democratic party and then Boston government in general. —And, oddly enough, the historic event had occurred, 125 years earlier, on the seventeenth day of March. 
"Well," says Professor O'Connor, "I'll tell you about that. One night I was giving a lecture in a big hall in South Boston." (South Boston is an area run by Irish politicians and, until about that time in the 1990's, by the Irish Mafia headed by Whitey Bulger.) "During my talk, someone referred to the tradition that Washington's troops used the password 'St. Patrick' on the dark night they moved those cannon. I said that I had never found documentation of the use of 'St. Patrick.'
"Someone shouted, 'Me granmudder tole me the password was St. Patrick!' Some guy fairly screamed, 'Fodder O'Malley tole me it was so!' "I looked desperately all around me for the nearest escape route, fearing for my life. All of sudden a little guy in the back yelled, 'Ladies and gentleman, the refreshments are ready in the next room! And I'm sure Professor O'Connor will look until he finds the historical proof.' It was [State Senate President] Billy Bulger." Professor O'Connor never did actually answer my question —to the delight of the class. Among his many informative stories, one is my favorite because it is so strikingly succinct and illustrative. The Professor was telling us about the differences between the Republican and Democratic parties and their modi operandi in Boston at the dawn of the twentieth century: A canvassing Brahmin lady knocked on the door of an Irishwoman and asked for a vote for her brother, an incumbent elected official. The Irish gal asked, "What has your brother done for you?" The blueblood replied, "Oh, my brother would never use his office for my gain!" The Irish gal retorted, "If he won't do anything for his own sister, what the hell is going to do for me?" GreatSocialistPeoplesLibyanArabJamahiriya.com, Part Two Tuesday, March 15, 2011 The first daily Google Analytics report for the one-page website that I put up this weekend is in: Yesterday it got fifty-one hits from eighteen countries. Those statistics for the first day of an unpublicized URL seem a little strange to me. Maybe the Harvard internet security specialist whom I consulted post facto passed around the URL, but I do not think so. Three of the hits are from Washington; two from London; two from Paris. I hope that Western security agencies are not wasting their time checking my mental status or militancy. The truth is that I am actually a flower child who is just very pissed off by what is happening. It is quite sad for me to have to state that someone should die, but the case is manifest: The Gaddafi family is directing mass-murder. While the West sorts out its bureaucratic, diplomatic, and pragmatic priorities, the Libyan army is racing to kill off the protestors before action is taken. The city that most visited the page is Tunis with five. Maybe my little graffito is encouraging in the right places. It seems to me that the Arab League could do more than request a no-fly zone. Didn't the US sell the Saudis AWAC's thirty years ago? What the hell are they for, King Abdullah? And where are the Flying Tigers —Arab or other? Postscript March 16 The page was visited only three times yesterday, so I suppose the initial traffic was only that caused by a dissemination done by the internet consultant, who has widely scattered connections. GreatSocialistPeoplesLibyanArabJamahiriya.com Monday, March 14, 2011 A couple of days ago while reading the Wikipedia entry for Libya, I read the official English version of the country's name: Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Wondering if the name was registered in the .com domain, I checked. (I use my own webpage, with a DomainTools search, to check domain availability; it is here should anyone care to use it.) To my surprise, it was not registered, so I registered it and put up a page with my cyber-graffito. I doubt that it will do any good, but I felt a need to make a statement in a manner that might possibly in some small way abet the rebels. NFL Shutdown Saturday, March 12, 2011  One of my vices is watching NFL football. During this offseason, the league is giving me comic relief from other, more serious news that has been disturbing me quite a bit. In this video we hear the counsels for the league and for the players make their cases. NFL football is a nearly gladiatorial spectacle, and thus it's hard to avoid empathy for the labor side of the fuss. On the one hand, there are the players, who literally spend their bodies, and, on the other, the owners of —of what?— those bodies or the franchises, who spend their cash to make more cash.
Somehow I get a chuckle from witnessing the squabbling over a mighty big pie. Tsunami in Japan 7:10 PM, Friday, March 11, 2011 Chris Matthews, broadcasting on MSNBC, was just consulting with someone who stated that the severity of waves related to the bottom at the shore such that shallower bottoms caused greater waves ashore than steep submarine slopes, which, the remote reporter stated, break up the waves. Oy! The precise opposite is true, as is plain to anyone who has been exposed to rudimentary high school science courses. The more quickly a wave is compressed, the higher the wave. I took note of that gaffe because I find it ironic —or revelatory?— that such an ignorantly erroneous report should come on the same day as reports of radical cuts in the public education budgets of several states. For a report on an upcoming earthquake, closer to home for most of the readership of this blog, that will likely have far greater casualties, see here. While probably not nearly as powerful as the earthquake that just occurred off the coast of Sendai, this one will happen under and on land. It is noteworthy that the topic of the linked article is not conjectural; it will happen. What is the purpose of the USAF? Thursday, March 10, 2011 Today the BBC reports that the US Senate is told that Gaddafi will prevail and that "Hillary Clinton said the US would not act in Libya without international authorisation," even as other Arab states are asking for a no-fly zone. In what war college would anyone profess that it is a better expenditure of US military intervention to fight on the ground in the mountains of Afghanistan than to use the vast superiority of the USAF to aid freedom fighters who already hold large areas of flat terrain, who are willing to die to free their Libya, and who are begging for the USAF? Afghanistan is another Vietnam. Benghazi is another Kuwait. The comparisons are clear and the results have been as can be expected (or would be, in the case of Benghazi.) These comparisons are not novel; these same circumstances —the differences between using military prowess against natives in difficult terrain and using the same force in pitched battles— became quite clear when Victorians were prosecuting their little police-the-world wars. The fate of eastern Libya may prove very sad, and, if so, it will entail the exposure of the cowardice of Western leadership and their apparently profound ignorance of history. One thing is certain: The Arab world will not forget that, when Americans pleaded for gasoline, the US made sure that the emir of Kuwait could rebuild his fantastic palace; nor will the Arab world forget that, when people pleaded for simple freedom under much the same circumstances, Hillary said, "Absent international authorisation, the US acting alone would be stepping into a situation whose consequences are unforeseeable." Top Ten List of Things I Hope I Never Say February 17, 2011 10—Very unique 9 — More perfect 8 — An alumni 7 — My wife and myself went 6 — More of a [whatever] than a 5 — With him being 4 — On some level 3 — If you're not part of the solution 2 — These phrases literally blow my mind. 1 — Well, Terry, I'm glad you asked that. That's a very good question. Postscript April 6, 2011 Today's Washington Post website has an article about a Bob Dylan concert in China. The article includes (after an erroneously placed comma) this part of a sentence: " ...ended with an encore performance of 'Blowin' in the Wind,' whose lyrics became synonymous with the antiwar and civil rights protest movements." The word "synonymous" is currently, I think, more often misused than used correctly, but one would hope that the Post would engage better writers. 
Stata Center
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 Recently had occasion to send a friend some photos of the Frank Gehry-designed group of buildings at MIT called the Stata Center. I figure, since I formatted them for email, I may as well put them up on the web. I took these in the summer of ought-four, when the place was brand-spanking-new. I think the photos might be interesting enough to merit a peek. Friday the Thirteenth and Boy Scout Training Sunday, February 13, 2011 
Usually triskaidekaphobia is just a silly joke. Today I happen to remember one Friday the Thirteenth, forty-one years ago today, that gave one young woman some major discomfort.
I think of it now because, recently while cleaning a drawer, I ran across an old Fall River Herald News clipping depicting the Flaming Arrow Patrol of Troop 50, of which I was the fearless leader, who won a first aid contest. That contest was a lot of fun, because I had convinced Danny and Phil that we should not inform the adult Scout leaders that we intended to participate. We were a bright group, and we did not need the grown-up supervision that our competition had. It was a kick to stop by the Assistant Scoutmaster's house that evening to let him know we had won a district championship. We won the Massasoit Council (the finals) contest too, but then the adults came along for that one, so it was not the same. Years and countercultures later, my then best friend Stevie Hawkins and I were on our way, on a Friday the Thirteenth, to see roommate Andy Paley's group Catfish Black do a gig in Harvard Square. (It must have been some kind of strange gig, because I remember that Andy borrowed Stevie's tights for the show.) Just after Stevie and I had crossed the foot of Garden Street in the Square, we heard a scream. A young woman, Marianne(spelling?) Dorsey, had just been pinned by two cars and was lying on the ground with a broken thigh. When I asked Stevie to go on without me she agreed, and I stayed to do what I could. With my Boy Scout training, I knew that there was something called "shock" and that it was important to make an injured person feel as comfortable as possible. I put my arm or jacket (can't remember) under her head and knelt beside her while I told her that she was very near a hospital and would soon get swell care and all that. Hovering above us were a few guys of my age, one of whom said, "We're Harvard medical students." I ignored them and gave my attention to gal on the ground. I rode with her in the ambulance and then walked away at the hospital entrance. I spoke with Marianne a few weeks later and learned that my attentiveness had been very helpful to her. I knew then that the training (parts of which were silly: think snakebites) that I had gotten in the Boy Scouts could actually be useful in a world far removed from the Boy Scout weltanshauung. Since that time, I have appreciated that no matter how screwy any given discipline might be, there is probably something that can be gained from it that is useful. How screwy is Buddhism? "No matter what happens, it is what is happening and is therefore acceptable." Well, that's just nuts. —Unless one happens at some time, just to get by, to have need to reach toward equanimity. Buddhism comes in mighty handy at that moment. One does not have to buy the whole farm to enjoy the fruit. Years later I was studying expository writing, and I complained to pal Ed that my teacher in a particular extension course was not bright enough to be very useful. He said, "That's no excuse not to learn something." Made sense to me. For search engines: Depicted are Gerald Tremblay, Gary Boyer, Donald Saucier, Daniel Gauthier, Paul Lapointe, and Philip Collard. Another Outbreak of Freedom? Friday, February 11, 2011 The events in Egypt of the last twenty-four hours are fascinating. It is another case of the suspension of belief in a bad system, allegorically akin to how my generation stopped the Vietnam War by ending our belief in it. The question now —aside from whether the military will fulfill the popular will— is what the new Egyptian belief system will engender to replace the autocracy and its attendant repression. We have seen before that a shift in collective consciousness can ostensibly lead us from one evil only to find us espousing another. Today we think with abhorrence of the serfdom of yesteryear, a system in which people were tied to the land on which they lived, at the same time that we are surrounded by thousands who have no place at all to live. Today, in many countries, we reject the conscription of yesteryear, only to have the current US president work toward replacing it with universal conscription in the guise of a "fairness" and "equality." We saw feminism of the 1970's work toward a world in which women would have a choice to work in the marketplace. Now women have no choice but to work in the marketplace. Blunders are a regular part of the progressive development of any collective consciousness. When we feel glad that an autocracy is being replaced by a democracy, we ought at the very least to try to remember some of the fundamental principles known to the founders of Western Civilization. The word "tyrant" was not a pejorative to the ancient Greeks who coined the word. A tyrant was a man who took over the city-state and made things right when injustice overtook a democracy. We ought also to remember that Hitler was elected democratically. It is the collective consciousness of a people that makes its society good or bad, not its nominal form of government. Sometimes when a political body is ahead of others, it retains unfortunate vestiges of what it is trying to improve. England was ahead of the curve with democracy; it still has a monarch. Sometimes when a political body is behind others, it skips the mistakes of its neighbors. Wyoming, the forty-fourth state, was the first to allow women to vote. Is it too much to hope that Egypt could find itself more in line with the latter example? Government is a fiction created by collective consciousness. Mubarak is gone because Egyptians began to believe he was gone. Because of the pluralism of their society, because of the new world-consciousness afforded by the internet, because they are among the latest literate people to have a revolution, and most importantly because they understood that belief is more powerful than violence, we can be cautiously optimistic about what Egyptians might think up next. A Crisis of Conscience Wednesday, February 9, 2011 A couple of days ago I received an email intended for someone else. We all get these once in a while; these misdirected missives have been plaguing us since we (in my case, twenty years ago) have been using email, but this particular email gave me pause and gave me cause to review what is and what is not gentlemanly behavior. This email concerned the management of money —the kind of money that might or might not (I couldn't tell.) change my lifestyle from subsistence to something more comfortable. I am generally, in the estimation of a fair number of decent, intelligent people, a good guy, but —Jumping Jehosophat!— what should a man do when he stumbles upon a cache that, precisely because of the injustice upon which our society runs, ostensibly belongs to someone else? One the one hand, I avow that the only hope of justice in this world is the use of chaos (like misdirected emails) by people of circumspection and conscience. For example, Harvard Professor Erich Goldhagen, who taught courses on the Holocaust, told us that he liked corruption, because it was what got him out of the Holocaust. For another example, I am a Vietnam-era draft-dodger; it did not matter that I contravened the rules (and in so doing may have gotten someone else killed instead of me) or that I was a coward. I did the right thing. There is enough institutionalized evil, really bad stuff, in the world that honest persons must on a regular basis skirt the conventions of society to meet any reasonable standard of decency. On the other hand, if I cannot be trusted by some poor little rich guy to allow him the simple mistake of misdirecting an email, how can I count myself a real gentleman, a moral man? If this fellow is only following all the rules laid out for him, by everyone he has ever known, to take care of his family, can I righteously justify the use of his mistake? To pose a less subtle question, if I witness a tool-laden pickup truck's skid on an icy turn into a chromed Hummer, do I really do the right thing by reporting it? These are difficult questions for me. Fortunately, I have a moral pal who knows all about this kind of email, and he advised me that he would not open the documents attached. I completely erased the email and its contents. Somewhere someone is laughing at me all the way to the bank. All I get from my little crisis of conscience is whatever accrues to one who has never been bought. —Which conclusion is not to suggest that if I ran across an unmarked bag of cash... A Little Story about a Man versus Bureaucracy Monday, January 31, 2011 Today I shoveled about a foot of snow off a flat roof of about 500 square feet for dear friend and customer Kate. After I finished, I asked Kate for permission to retell an historical anecdote given me by her husband, Tom, who passed a couple of years ago. When his WWII service began, Tom was a psychologist. (It was only later that, with the help of the GI Bill, he became an MD and psychiatrist.) Being an intellectual, Tom had some clear insight into what WWII was about; being a Jew, Tom wanted to do his best for the war effort. Thus, when Tom was assigned to the most ridiculous unit imaginable, he tried to get himself transferred. What unit? Why, that would be the horse cavalry! Yes, because he could ride, Tom the psychologist was placed into the horse cavalry. According to the backward military thinking at the start of the war, it was still a viable force. His captain noticed that Tom's abilities were wasted in the cavalry, and somehow he found himself in a unit of combat engineers. Since Tom had no engineering experience, he was trained in Morse Code to be a signalman with the unit. Combat engineers were very important to victory. My own father ran across the Rhine on a pontoon bridge, so I can offer family testimony to their importance. Tom knew, though, that he was still not in the best place to fight Hitler. He wanted to join the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA.) While on leave, he managed to take a particular Army test that quantified leadership abilities. That test helped to determine that he was suited for the OSS. Finally, Tom got himself placed where he could do his utmost to defeat Nazism. Tom did not want people to think erroneously that he was fearful of fighting at the front; he wanted only to stop the evil. So it was that he told no one outside family until many years later of a detail of how he succeeded in getting himself transferred. Before the war, while Tom was an honors student at Harvard, he had been part of the team that devised the test that helped get him into the OSS. Fish 'n' Chips Sunday, January 30, 2011 Just ate some of the best fish 'n' chips I've ever encountered around Cambridge. It was cooked by Ashok Tammany at the The Tavern at the End of the World, which is at 108 Cambridge Street in Charlestown, just outside Somerville. It was different from the purist (and I think the best I've ever had) fish'n'chips that one can get at Sir Crickett's in Orleans on Cape Cod, but, my goodness, it was good. Among the dozen beers on tap, I chose the Berkshire Steel Rail. There is parking in the back. The place was two-thirds empty on this Sunday night in the coolest part of winter. I am going to return before this place gets crowded. What Global Warming? or Enough With the Snow, Already; I Need to Park the Car Sunday, January 23, 2011 Now, I like snow as much as the next guy, but, as my lovely City of Cambridge, Massachusetts weeds out the folks not smart or trendy or rich enough to buy inside-the-house parking spots, it is getting increasingly difficult to moor my old Mercury Grand Marquis anywhere within walking distance of New England. Repeated twelve-inch snowfalls just compound the problem, what with snow taking up so much curb space, and I am neither going to duke it out with my neighbors —all friends whether they like it or not— for parking places, nor am I about to stand this nonsense without I should do something about it! So, recalling the thousands, if not hundreds, of TV shows I have seen wherein Injuns do dances to bring on rain, I sashayed around an idea of a strategy. If Injuns can bring rain with dances (and of course it would not be depicted so very, very many times if it were not so) then they can certainly bring snow when the temperature is down here in the single Fahrenheits. Furthermore, if one can dance up some snow clouds, then one can most certainly dance away snow clouds. Only makes sense. So, inasmuch as I am part-Injun myself, I figure that I should, by all rights, have the genetic wherewithal to actuate the above-mentioned communications with the forces of nature to the end of finding a parking space. It is a case of what both ancient and modern philosophers would call a logical necessity. Gotta happen, right? So, not wanting to presume to call attention to myself among my nearest neighbors, I walked a couple of blocks from home and, off to the side of the middle of a street, started doing my best intuited anti-snow dance. I was dancing pretty well, and I thought I was giving a good account of myself, when I noticed that this police cruiser was coming down the street and seemed to slow down a bit as it approched my vicinity. So, realizing that these bluecoats were giving me the eye with an interest in protecting the safety of my own self and fellow citizens from those variations of human behavior that might be at variance with peace on earth, I nimbly decided that it was a good time to recalibrate my quest to ensure a safe haven for the Grand Marquis. So, I visited my oldest uncle, the fellow who by virtue of still standing is the patriarch of my family and also, because he is the most experienced in not dancing near the middle of an icy street to get a parking space, might offer me an alternative. He, being a Canuck like me but older and still Catholic, recommended the intercession of one Jesus, of Whom with a capital "w" I had already heard, having been an altar boy. Been there; done that. God can do all kinds of mysterious stuff, but I know from hard-won experience that there is no way (in heaven, hell, or the earthly streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts) that He with a capital "h" can turn a Grand Marquis into a ZipCar. Even Japanese conglomerates can't, and they can make molehills out of mountains. So, after saying a couple of rosaries just to hedge my bets, I did what any modern citizen of a democracy does these days: I placed the responsibility for my problem, for this superabundance of snow, on the gummint. I went to the office of my congressman, but the nice lady there stumped me with the question of whether the Grand Marquis had an elect-my-congressman bumper sticker. She had me there, and I knew it was a case of precipitation without representation, and there was no American Revolution in the forecast. So, at my wit's end, I decided to take the case to the oldest, wisest person I know. He's a professor emeritus over to Harvard. When I got to his study in the big library building over there, I found that he was guarded all around by stacks of paper that were even higher than the snowbanks outside and a lot heavier, and those walls of paper were guarded by a grad student who informed me that the professor was very busy, and I needed an appointment. I said please. So, the grad kid disappeared into the secret passages of the paper labyrinth and came back a while later. I asked can the prof help me? The kid said yes. When said I. The kid said, "March twenty-first." 
Watching Football
Monday, January 17, 2011 Watched last night's elimination of the New England Patriots from what I, along with most of the football world, thought would be their clear path to the Super Bowl. I was, like other Pats fans, stunned and crestfallen, but I take a circumspect stance about such things. I was crestfallen not because they lost the game but because I won't have the next few months of delight in the vicarious pleasure of victory in this meaningless war we call sports. I was disappointed, and that disappointment defeats the purpose of watching sports, so to hell with it. I didn't bother to watch the Jets' victory kneeldown at the end of the game; I just turned off the television and tried to divert my attention to other things, just the way I did when the Red Sox blew the '86 World Series. What's the point of hanging around to mourn defeat, when the point of giving sports any attention as a fan is to invest emotion in something that can have no inherent significance —and therefore no real harm— in the real world? I'll take the fun distraction and leave aside the bitterness; that's what it's for. As Boston Herald sportswriter Ron Borges put it in a column last December about another Jets-Pats game, "isn't that why people get involved to the point of obsession with this meaningless stuff in the first place?" Got Pipes? Jackie Wilson's "Danny Boy" Friday, January 14, 2011 Heard something this past summer that amazed me, and I had to listen to it again a couple of times today.  We were swarming back from the woods or from Cape Cod or somewhere else south of Boston, and we had on this little radio station, WATD in Marshfield, Massachusetts, that is small enough to be one of the hippest stations I have ever heard in my few years. This station's musical selections are obviously not mandated by some dork of a professional programmer whose job is to locate the least common denominator and to pander shlock thereunto. This station employs oldies rock'n'roll DJ's who are masters at choosing songs from a blend of a few standards (like Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue,") some ridiculously campy one-hit wonders that bring laughs (like Lorne Greene's "Ringo,") and a strong dose of truly great recordings (like Jimi's "Red House.")
I like rock'n'roll and related music and especially enjoy really fine rock singing. My favorites are Roy Orbison and Ray Charles. I used to sing along with the records of John & Paul, Roy, Elvis, et.al., and maybe that's why I really like good singing of rock, folk, and soul tunes. —And I could do it a bit, too. When a dear friend got married a few years ago, she had their party around a karaoke machine. I did Roy's "Pretty Woman" and Elvis' "All Shook Up." Afterward, people said to me, "I didn't know you could sing." I hadn't known it, myself, really. The bride actually said to me, "If you sang at a karaoke bar, girls would come sit down beside you." Hearing that was a hoot. The upshot is that when I hear a really good singer do a favorite song, I have an internal need to imagine how it would feel to make my diaphragm, lungs, and vocal chords reproduce those sounds. Sometimes I hear something that is truly great and that I cannot possibly imagine reproducing, and that combination transports me. (Think of Smokey Robinson.) One day I was painting a condo on a SuperBowl Sunday, but I left in a hurry at the appropriate time to get home for kickoff. On the way home, in the car, Ray Charles was singing live "America the Beautiful" for the opening ceremonies. It's a good thing it was a Sunday, because, after hearing him sing that song that day that way, I would have driven straight to a recruitment office. I really do get taken aback by some singing. Well, as I was saying, there we were, driving along the Expressway into town minding our own business when this song "Danny Boy" came along the airwave of WATD. I have always thought that this is a smaltzy, maudlin song that is appropriate only to campy movie scenes of drunken Irish wakes. I have never liked the lyrics or the way they are generally delivered. But somebody named Jackie Wilson was singing it. I have never, ever heard any singing of a pop tune that impressed me more; I was transported; for me, it pushes the envelope of what can be done with a song. Alright, I'll admit it: It gives me goosebumps. There, I said it! Here it is on Youtube. The N-Word Sunday, January 9, 2011 Recently read Susan Orlean's January 7 blog entry about the use of the N-word. In it, she refers to the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the word "nigger" with "slave." When I first heard about this new edition, I was too furious to  give it much attention, but Ms. Orlean's sensitive and intelligent article recalled my attention to this absurd new development of political correctness, and I feel the need to put in my two cents.
"Nigger" is a word that is almost unique in American English. I say "almost" because there is one other word that —in a segment of the American population, men of my age— is comparable: "gook." The primary meaning of "nigger" in America is "a person who may be hung simply for speaking out." "Gook" denotes, for (Vietnam-era) American men of my age, "a person who may be shot for target practice." Neither word is acceptable to anyone who claims to be human, because to be human is of logical necessity to acknowledge the humanity of other humans. However, we cannot deny the past. To exclude either word from reportage of the past is to deny the history of slavery or of the extreme racism of the Vietnam War. Imagine a history of the Vietnam War that purports to be an accurate depiction of that war that does not include the word "gook." It is not possible to understand that war without an understanding of the word "gook," and it is not possible to understand slavery in America without an understanding of the word "nigger." If anyone anywhere at any time cares to explain to future generations what slavery in the US was (for whatever reason, but hopefully to get beyond it) one must use that foul word just as one must use the word "gook" in any explanation of the Vietnam War. One might suggest that Mark Twain did not, in writing Huck Finn, understand the import of the N-word. If anyone, perhaps an idiotic librarian or an unqualified school superintendent or an especially slimy politician, alleges that Mark Twain did not fully comprehend the N-word, I recommend to that person the reading of "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It." If one can read this piece and still claim that Clemens' work ought to be adjusted by the profiteers who edited Huck Finn, then I suggest that one should stop reading this post and go seek a vision of the Blessed Virgin in one's slice of pizza —which action will, I guarantee, make more sense than trying to tell Mark Twain how to write about racism. Felling Another Tree Monday, January 3, 2011 
Went to the woods for some air and decided to take down a dead tree that was threatening an outhouse. It was only the second substantial tree that I have knocked down, a bit smaller than the first (about which I had more to show and tell.) I still do not know what I am doing, really, but I was quite successful insofar as not getting killed and putting it down where I wanted it. However, it was much more work than it should have been. I have a lot to learn.
Nice Fix for Mac Computer Problem Sunday, January 2, 2011 About a fortnight ago, I acquired the latest Mac operating system, OS 10.6, called "Snow Leopard." The graphical user interface (GUI) that Apple created for OS X has gotten even worse. Apple calls the GUI theme "Aqua," but I prefer my own term: "WAlt Disney goes To HEll and dreams oBnoxious, eviL cArtoons in Nightmare inK" or "Wad-The-Blank" for short. The expansion of the intrusion of Wad-The-Blank impelled me to do something, anything, to mitigate my annoyance with my Mac experience. I found an important something that I could do about it. All Macs emit a chime upon start-up that is not optional. I suppose Apple builds computers this way so that, whenever you take a laptop (I don't have one, so I'm presuming.) to the library, you are forced to announce, "  Hey, everybody, I'm using a Mac!" or, whenever you wake up in the middle of the night and absolutely need to know who Nixon's running mate was in 1960, you are forced to send the message, "Hey, Honey, I'm awake! Are you? Can you sleep through this racket?"
I searched for a remedy for the noise and found a link to a free little program mercifully and generously produced by someone in Japan at Arcana Research. I installed it and found that it did not work on the first restart but has functioned grandly on every subsequent restart. Hallelujah! By the way, I did previously find a work-around for that chime, but it is virtually impossible to use successfully every time. When I plug external speakers into my Mac, turn on the speakers, turn the volume on the speakers all the way down, turn off the sound on my Mac, there is no sound at startup. My success with the startup noise has inspired me to seek a way to eradicate what Apple calls the "Dock," which I call "Pier," which is short for "Perpetually Intrusive and Evil Rubbish." With OS X, Pier replaced the convenient and legible dropdown menus of previous OS's. Maybe some kind programmer out there is, like me, literate and has developed a way to get out of the world of Looney Tunes-like icons and get back to the realm of common sense. 
Goodbye, 2010 Friday, December 31, 2010 Had a bunch of painting work to get done this week, Monday through Friday —or so I thought. In the event, I apparently had only four days to get the work done, Monday through yesterday. On Sunday, the day after Christmas, an eighteen-inch snowstorm hit. I truncated my weekend to start taking care of sidewalks for my customer and a couple of other people I help in emergencies. Sunday and Monday I traipsed around Cambridge on foot through unshoveled sidewalks, with a backpack of spare hat, coat, and gloves (so that I could get home without pneumonia.) Tuesday I finished with most of the snow removal, including freeing my own vehicle. While moving the hard slush from my customer's driveway, I was accosted by a presumably sociopathic neighbor of my customer who insisted that I pile the snow in a certain way on the street. I told her to speak to my customer. She said, "I'm going to call the police!" I replied, "Okay. Have a nice day!" (Of course, no police arrived, and, while continuing my work, I heard from passersby of my acquaintance that she is indeed a miserable human being.) The whole blizzard-cleaning was a lot less fun than it sounds to be, I can promise you. Finally, on Wednesday, I got to the painting part of my work. I had brought my customer's paint to the hardware store to shake the cans. (Cans of paint require mixing before use.) After getting the especially difficult prep work done for first part of this job, I opened one of the cans of purportedly white paint to find that it had been tinted; it is of no use. I looked at the clock, and it was one; Masse's, where I usually get this particular paint, closes at one on Wednesday. I called the other local store that carries this paint, and they did not have it in stock, so I retrieved the small stash I keep for use at home. On Thursday, yesterday, I completed the, again, very tedious prep work for the second stage of the job and painted it. I had enough paint for the third stage, but I did not want to run out, so I left to fetch more. I got halfway to the store when my car's front end fell apart. I called the towing guy and got the hulk to the mechanic. Then I sloshed back to the job. It was getting to be a very long day, after several very long days. While doing the difficult scouring for the third section of painting, the ten-foot aluminum ladder I was standing on was near a ceiling light fixture that really wanted attention, which attention was not part of my job, but folks generally appreciate the little extras I often try to do. Thus there I was, standing on an aluminum ladder, with a metal shade in my left hand and a wet piece of terry cloth in my right, scrubbing away, when the fixture virtually exploded in my face. A small piece of plastic had given way and the juice had shorted, blowing out the room's lights. Now, some folks would have gotten upset, but not me. I was glad that I have enough experience not to be found electrocuted, dead, and smelly with a broken back. I got a flashlight, found the fuse box, removed the bad fixture, etc. When I got the lights back on, I finished the third section of painting and called it a long, long day (a nasty chunk of it not billable of course.) I all but collapsed into bed at 10:30 or so and, except for a two-hour recess of reading in the middle of the night, slept for a total of eight and a half hours. It was more than I have slept during one night in at least seven years. I was exhausted. I was awakened at about nine with a message that my customer was back this morning —not tomorrow as I had been told— and the customer is very unhappy that my tools were still on the job and that it is not finished. Meanwhile, my fingertips have not quite yet recovered from the cold shoveling and a few have skin worn off from the scrubbing. (But, my dear reader, rest assured that, every second that I am alive, I rejoice, because I am so glad that I get to be me.) Goodbye, 2010. Good riddance. Happy New Year, you bet! Fancy Adding Machines December 19, 2010 This entry is a rant about computers; please consider ignoring it entirely and moving on to other entries, which, no doubt, will be found to be enthralling and enriching. Computers and the programs that run on them are all produced, I am convinced, by Princes and Princesses of Darkness. While these people may not exactly be the spawn of Satan, I am fairly sure that they are at least related by marriage. How else could mere humans conjure up such fantastically illogical machines? Today I dragged myself to the Apple store in CambridgeSide Galleria to get updated on the latest operating system for Mac computers. My current, seven-year-old hardware/software combination virtually explodes when attempting as simple a task as parsing a Globe webpage. A fellow named Brian (spelling?) at the store was extremely patient and helpful. He had to be extremely patient if I was going to make heads or tails of the latest round of ridiculously obtuse pseudo-improvements that Apple is peddling. To begin with, OS X, the current series of Macintosh operating systems, was a great leap into silliness from the previous OS 9, which was, while not actually sane, much more manageable and stable than the mysterious offerings from Microsoft. OS 9 was a natural expansion and progression from previous Apple operating systems. However, as is the case with carmakers, computer makers find it more profitable to plan obsolescence than to make common sense. (How does one sell more cars when everyone has a car? Ditto computers.) Thus when Apple produced this new OS X about ten years ago, they assured us that it was so stable that it could never crash. Apparently this assurance was meant to redefine "crash" from "monitor goes black" to "monitor stays bright though everything stops working." Indeed, OS X is in no way as stable as was OS 9. When something failed with OS 9 —which happenstance did not occur during the last two years that I used it— the computer simply shut down; one would have to restart the machine. When something fails with OS X (and it fails regularly) one gets what I and people for whom I do Mac support call "The Eternal Spinning Colorwheel of Death." Then one has actually to unplug the hardware and start again. Some improvement! I recall the first time I saw OS X, in another Apple store, about a decade ago. I uttered to my companion and fellow Mac-user something akin to "This is horrible!" The convenient menus at the top of the monitor were replaced with the "Dock," those little animated cartoon icons that Apple genii tout as user-friendly replacements for words. I be literate'n'shit! I suppose that when Apple folks think of "user," they envision a five-year-old who has never held a book or a college student who is stressed by such archaic academic challenges as reading. But that Dock in OS X was just the opener. No longer could one download a QuickTime video; one had to buy QuickTimePro to save a video. No longer could one work with PDF files; one had to buy Acrobat from the third-party software company. No longer could one upload files to the web with a free Fetch program; one had to buy that. Apple deliberately crippled their operating system in order to gouge more from their customers. Steve Jobs, the front man for Apple, once had a vision of getting rich creating something novel and ostensibly useful, a personal computer that could be used by anyone. He and his company were so politically attuned that they took their name from the Beatles' Apple Records. Some years ago they postured as responsible corporate citizens when they fought to build a plant in Texas that would offer health insurance to the gay partners of their employees; that was not an easy concept to be pioneeering in that neck of the woods. I thought that this was a corporation that incorporated a contempary standard of human decency. Beginning with my experience with OS X, I came to understand that Apple joined the ranks of the robber barons of the nineteenth-century railroad-building and industrial-revolution days, the super-rich slobs who are powerful enough to manipulate the consciousness of society enough to accumulate more and more and more wealth for the sake of accumulating more. (Just you wait; Carnegie Hall will be renamed The Steve Jobs Center soon enough.) I remember the moment that I realized that Steve Jobs had married the spawn of Satan: In the popular application iTunes there is a feature called "Visualizer" that generates imagery in sync with the music. It offers a mental escape while one listens to one's escapist audial reverie, a respite from the stresses of life. One day I started iTunes in the then-most-recent version of OS X and discovered that after several minutes the graphic representation of the music devolved into the Apple logo. That is when I knew that Apple had sold its last vestige of a claim to human kindness and that Apple Corp. is about making money for Apple Corp. at the cost of any and every thing but making money.  That epiphany —that Apple was not a force on the side of light— reminded of the moment that I first learned about how to understand computers and the people who design them. A close associate —who was a computer pioneer and now develops systems for IBM— sent me that first viral email video of the animated dancing baby. (The one I am including here is not the original, which was a simpler black line drawing on a white or transparent background.) This file was sent as an attachment, which I did not know how to open. I asked a user assistant in the Harvard computer lab, where I was emailing, for help; I asked her not to open the attachment but to tell me how to learn how to do such things. She replied, "You just have to know." In other words, the system made no sense. That moment defined for me the nature of computers and of their designers. Computers and computer programs are not created to make sense, nor are they developed sensibly; they are created to separate consumers from cash.
Having started using Macs in the early 1990's for simple math problems and word processing, I was glad to see the obviation of white-out and correcting tape. (For you whippersnappers, those were things that one used to cover typing errors on paper.) When instantaneous, electronic email came about, I was even more interested. When I witnessed the popularization of the internet, I got hooked. Now, here was something, an egalitarian availability of communication worldwide! I thought that the internet would be an equalizer. It would afford everyone a chance to be heard. Naive, foolish fellow that I was, I did not foresee that the internet would not become a road that anyone could walk down. After all, a road in the real world is somewhat accessible to most people. If you can walk, you can travel along most roads. If you need a wheelchair, you go slower. If you have a car, you can go faster. If you have bus fare, you can go that way. Not so with the internet; it is more like a superhighway: You can only travel down those roads for which you have the wherewithal to afford the means of conveyance. You have to have the latest computer with the latest browser to surf the web successfully. So, let's wrap up this rant and get to my point. Electronic mail and the internet (and maybe a few simpler adding/writing chores) are the only humane and moral justifications for computers beyond the accumulation of wealth. One cannot use the internet successfully without the latest, costliest computers and operating systems. And the kicker is that the former leader among computer producers in a digitally moral new world, Apple, is now the leader in compelling people to fork over cash to communicate. In what I believe to be exactly correct computer parlance, Apple "sucks" and Microsoft "sucks worse." Yes, I will now buy new Apple products, but the experience will be like going to Home Depot. Afterwards, I will feel the need for a shower. Would somebody please introduce me to Linux? 
Classical Music and Football
December 5, 2010 Attended the Handel and Haydn Society's production of Handel's Messiah at Symphony Hall this afternoon, then went home and watched the Steelers-Ravens game. I noted that the players in both of the events required extreme discipline to pursue their professions and marvelled at the variation of human endeavor. I also noted that I appreciated the concert more and enjoyed the game more. Wondering why I feel this way, I come to the conclusion that my reactions are due to the fact that "music hath charms that soothe the savage beast," while football merely channels the savage beast. 
Lenny's Farm
November 26, 2010 A time-lapse photography project done, from July of 2009 through today, for two purposes: —To memorialize Lenny Giesta —To illustrate urban growth in Inman Square About Wikipedia November 24, 2010 One suspects that there are a lot of folks who have secret dirty little habits of which they are not proud and about which they feel an occasional need to confess. I hereby confess one of my more easily confessable habits: When I wake up in the middle of the night and know that I will not sleep for a while, instead of picking up a book, I go to Wikipedia. I choose a topic and read all around the general vicinity. For months, I read about almost every battleship ever launched. Currently, I have been reading about British royalty of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These are topics that carry some indisputable facts about them, so it is not likely that the careful reader gets misled by the historical redaction of political correctness or fashionable interpretation. The size of a ship or the coronation date of a king is likely to be accurately reported. Such reading is self-indulgent, relaxing to me, and even educational to an extent. However, one does have to remember that one gets what one pays for, and one cannot hold Wikipedia to the standards of accuracy that would be expected from, say, the University of Chicago Press. I really should be reading good books in the middle of the night. The foregoing is meant to offer perspective to the reason for this entry to my blog: I am annoyed by Wikipedia. First, it is the purveyor of the worst grammar I have ever witnessed in a large body of text. If one searches Wickipedia for "him being," one gets 3,194 results, but my experience suggests that the real number of appearances is a good deal greater. The syntax in most articles that I have seen is ridiculous; verbs and nouns are interchangeable; concepts perform physical actions; the paucity of clarity "literally blows my mind." As a purported source of information for the twenty-first century, Wikipedia is doing its part to ensure that today's youth will not develop the acuity, much less discernment, to solve twenty-first century problems. More personally, I am sensitive to the likelihood that my own verbal usage is suffering from my exposure to this website. Second —and this is what has actually incited this entry— at the top of every bleeding page of Wikipedia are currently the words, "A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder ***** *****." I use the asterisks because this person is gathering more than his fair share of self-promotion. He reminds me of PBS's "American Experience" written by Ken Burns, directed by Ken Burns, done in consultation with Ken Burns and Ken Burns's brother. (Ken Burns is the director who has to have lugubrious violin music in the background to advise you that a photograph of a large pile of Civil War boots from amputated feet is a sad image, but that is another pet peeve.) Worse, his face is there alongside the plea on almost every page. It is clear that one who reports worldwide his thoughts and little adventures in a weblog, like the one you are reading, ought to be cautious about accusing anyone of self-promotion. However, I submit that there is greater irony in the fact that a huge website written by an untold number of volunteers —not a single one of whom is credited!— should have this guy's name at the top of every page. This irony is graceless at best, and it insults the intelligence of Wikipedia's readers and especially its contributors. I am utterly ignorant of what is wrong or right about this Wikipedia founder's fundraising, but I am certain that ***** *****'s name and face are simply not pretty enough to grace millions of webpages that he purports are webcast for "No agenda." And now, was it William IV who preceded Victoria? I'll have to search Wickipedia for William IV to check. Postscript November 29, 2010 Wow, it appears that I was right on the curve with the above. Today, for the first time, I encountered an entry in Wikipedia with a banner that did not include "***** *****'s" name. It read, "A personal appeal from Wikipedia author Kartika." Now, that's a pleasant variation. It currently appears at the top of the article entitled, "Peloponnesian War." By the way, I once wrote a term paper on the cause of that war for the course "The Peloponnesian War" at the Extension School. I enrolled in that one because, as a student of history, I wanted to have more familiarity with the reasons why that topic, that war, was one of the central foci of higher education for much of the existence of tertiary education. In retrospect, I believe that the reason that Hellenic war was studied so much more than other wars was that some of the first professional historians of Western Civilization were personally involved and because it occurred in Socrates' time. Ah, now there's a guy to get drunk with! 
Taking Down a Sizable Tree
November 23, 2010 A little adventure in my ongoing boyhood. Microwaved Egg November 12, 2010 One hears that a nuked egg will explode, but there is nothing like empirical evidence for those of us who need to know the absolute truth about certain things. Also, there are those of us who apparently lacked a sufficient number of opportunities during boyhood to blow up things. When a friend mentioned that he needed to dispose of an old, unused microwave oven, I volunteered to do the chore —with a little detour. 
Football-related trivia November 5, 2010 Over the past decade or so, I have followed NFL football; I have particularly enjoyed the play of wide receiver Randy Moss, who until recently played for the New England Patriots. Moss was traded about a month ago to the Minnesota Vikings; it was big news in the sports world, because he is one of the best ever at his position. Moss was canned by the Vikings this past Tuesday after making a fool of himself, in part by insulting the caterers who were serving in the Vikings locker room last Friday. The servers were from Tinucci's Restaurant and Caterering, of Newport, Minnesota, and included Gus Tenucci himself. This week they decided to retaliate by holding a promotion. ESPN.com reports: Tinucci's in suburban Newport will offer free lunches Friday [today] to the first 50 people who come to turn in their Moss jerseys. For everyone else, the lunch buffet will be marked down to $8.40, a takeoff on the receiver's No. 84 jersey, co-owner Gus Tinucci said Thursday.Last night I wrote an email to Gus and Mark Tenucci: Dear Messrs. Tinucci,This morning Gus Tinucci wrote back: Thanks for the nice words!!!! It's been a wild week!Well, a fairly modest but well established fifty-year-old suburban restaurant has just been launched into the attention of the entire US sports fan world; I'll just bet it's been a wild week! I hope that tonight Gus laughs at Randy's insult all the way to the bank. Steamy Nostalgia November 3, 2010 The Boston Globe is running an article entitled "Picking up steam, Mashing modern days with the Victorian age excites role players, artists, and other fans of steampunk." It is a source of personal amusement —and a bit of embarassment for my home metropolis— that the leading paper around here, once in every few years, grabs a new or old word and defines it as a new trend. Twenty or thirty years ago, it was "saloning;" the Globe reported this purportedly new fashion for gathering in a group for dinner and an evening of conversation. Huh? Where have they been the last ten millenia? Today the new word is "steampunk." Apparently, according to the Globe, steampunking is "add[ing to one's home or life] anachronistic (and sometimes nonfunctioning) machinery like old gears, gauges, and other accoutrements that evoke the design principles of Victorian England and the Industrial Revolution." Is the Globe suggesting that it has never heard of antique collectors? —Or is the Globe claiming that it has discovered a new subculture that it is populated by youngsters so sublimely ignorant that they think that they were the first to discover that things that have lasted over a hundred years are things that are lasting? Have these ostensibly cloistered steampunks never seen a hundred-year-old dental chair used as a reading chair? ...or an oak and brass firehose cabinet used as a fishing rod cabinet? ...or a steam pressure gauge used as a clock housing? ...or a train depot woodstove used as (gasp!) a source of home heat? ...or a milkglass and nickel-plated iron tool stand as a entryway catch-all? ...or a black-powder revolver cylinder as a pen holder? ...or a leather doctor's bag as a camera case? ...or an actual Victorian coat as (again, gasp!) a coat? Do they or the Globe actually think that these uses are new? Is there anyone who truly believes that these uses are novel and not in fact a practice that has been ongoing since these Victoriana were produced? Perhaps it might be a delightful exercise for a steampunk to set aside the time and money that would be spent on "steampunking" and to get a ride to Clark's Trading Post to see steam, not being used to reproduce the sound of drums or organs, but really playing drums and organs. Maybe steampunks ought to look into the many miles of steam pipes coursing their ways through the netherworld of Greater Boston for constant and daily use by such "steampunking," not-too-mechanically-nostalgic institutions as MIT. One cannot impugn the ability of the probably youthful writer of this well written article. That said, one can question the Globe's posture as venue for premier scribes of the City on a Hill. This article is not news; it is pandering to ignorance. 
Classical Music Concert
Friday, October 29, 2010 Went this evening to a Handel and Haydn Society concert at Symphony Hall and enjoyed it to the extent that I could remain fairly conscious. It was the general sort of music that I sometimes hear going to sleep, with the timer switch set on the amplifier. The violinists ganged up on the outnumbered other musicians, but Robert Levin played the piano better than a rabbit when they let him get a word in edgewise. You may justifiably opine that the above is the most ignorant review you have ever read, but please allow that it was long on brevity. Played Hooky October 28, 2010 With a predicted high temperature of seventy-five, it could not be helped. A Sunday Well Spent October 24, 2010 A day of three of my favorite hobbies: fishing, woodcutting, and watching professional football. Ten Years After Daddy-O's October 23, 2010 During the '90's, I was the most frequent patron of Daddy-O's Bohemian Cafe, an Inman Square restaurant that was very popular among the congnoscenti and glitterati of Cambridge and environs. Chef-owners Paul Sussman and Ellis Seidman closed in 2000. This evening Ellis and Paul hosted a Ten Years After  reunion gathering of former employees and families, and somehow I was invited. (I did the maintenance painting at Daddy-O's and did, on one occasion, fill in at the dishwasher.) I have dearly missed Ellis and Paul's creations the past decade, and I was more than a little delighted that they served up their old creations at the party. As much as I enjoyed the company of the attendees, I spent as much time as I possibly could eating. The party was an answer to a decade-long prayer. What fun!
Paul, who is currently chef at Brandy Pete's in the financial district in Boston, will be opening a new place in the theater district sometime in the spring, and I have gone all Pavlovian about the prospect. 
Surfcasting
September 25, 2010 Fished the Cape Cod Canal for the first time today, the first time in a couple of years that I did any kind of saltwater fishing. We arrived at the Canal Visitor Center, near the eastern mouth of the canal, at the inappropriate time of about two hours after high tide this afternoon, and the results were appropriate. I had bought both clams and mackerel for bait, from Cherry's Bait Shop in Plymouth. When I said to the gal who runs the place, "Oh, no, I forgot my knife!" she  gave me hers, saying that she was going to be shutting down anyway in a couple of weeks for the season. I'll never buy bait anywhere else around Plymouth, you betcha! That's Cherry's Bait Shop on Town Wharf in Plymouth, right in front of the Lobster Hut. No website and not even a published phone number. Gotta love it.
As stated, we got there at a bad time; as we walked toward the breakwater, a fellow was leaving with two keepers (28+" striped bass.) Though we stayed for hours, we caught only one striper, which was a little too undersized to bother to measure, and a few starfish. It was lovely notwithstanding the lack of piscine cooperation, and I hope to return once more before the striped bass are gone to winter haunts. 
Time Lapse Photography
September 24, 2010 (and ongoing) "Lenny's Farm" is the name I've given to a little ongoing project. Begun on July 2, 2009, this is a series of photos taken of a real estate development in Cambridge. A two-decker is being rehabbed, and a new duplex is being built in what was the backyard. The Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band 
September 21, 2010
In my email Inbox when I got home from work was a message from the Harvard Alumni Association that there was to be a gathering at Jillian's, a bar outside Fenway Park, and that Harvard President Drew Faust was to make an appearance before leaving to throw the ceremonial first pitch when the Red Sox host the Orioles tonight. What the HAA had in mind is beyond my guessing; bars in Kenmore Square, as far as I can figure, are approximately as interesting as car accidents. On my answering machine, oddly coincidentally, was a message from old pal Walter that he had an extra ticket for the game. Alas, I had to decline, because I was just too tired from a mildly hard day's work. The fact that I was not feeling up to accepting my pal's offer decided me to build my strength by going to my favorite eatery, Redbones, in Davis Square. When we left the place, we heard something like a combination oompah band, marching band, and Nawlins jazz band. As we walked to the city parking lot, we saw it playing in front of the Flatbread Company, a chic new pizza place that has retained the bowling alleys that have been in that space forever. The loose, fifteen-or-so-piece ensemble was The Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band. They, i.e., the band, gave me the most fun I've had on the street in many years, a real treat of old-timey musical ebullience and disciplined chaos. What marrow-deep joy! They were doing a benefit for an upcoming event called Honk!, and I suspect that it could be more fun than a rabbit. 
Rafiki Bistro
Saturday, September 18, 2010 A late lunch at Rafiki Bistro, between Harvard and Porter Squares. The burgers, though small for voracious me, are the best in Cambridge since Paul Sussman and Ellis Seidman closed Daddy-O's exactly ten years ago tomorrow. Chef/managing partner Jim Coleman, pictured, explained to us that he buys from local organic farmers. The difference in taste in not subtle, and, honestly, I am befuddled that one can get a table here in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Cape Cod September 17, 2010 
Stayed the last couple of nights on the Cape. Here is a shot of the Pilgrim Monument from the deck of our cottage at Sunset Bluff (a mom'n'pop operation that I can recommend) in Truro. The weather was benign and typical for September, mid-sixties and mostly sunny.
We were treated to dinner at The Mews, the best restaurant of my ken in Provincetown. I could live on the Tuna Sushi Tempura appetizer. We also ate at Bubala's, a favorite place especially for brunch, and The Mayflower, a workaday place in the center of Provincetown. The only disappointment of the trip is that apparently yesterday, Thursday, when I went to my favorite beach, Head of the Meadow, at midday to shoot the seals, it was the only day in the recent past when the seals failed to show up. It was generally a really enjoyable and restful outing. Campus Buildings 
September 12, 2010
A friend whose son is at Yale just sent me Forbes's slideshow of shots of The World's Most Beautiful College Campuses. (Yale is the fourteenth of their fourteen.) This slideshow is rather silly, as most of its ilk are, of course, but it calls to mind a very special campus building collection nearby. The Frank Gehry-designed MIT computer science center boggles my mind. It provides novel and very entertaining vistas for visitors, but I doubt its value. To be unkind, one might suggest that the buildings lean over or have protruding windows so that, when overwrought computer geeks look up from their monitors, try to square away their vision on the outdoors, see those walls and start losing their tacos, they can do so without soiling the interiors. To be serious, I think that the structures will be so expensive to maintain that they might be taken down before the bricks of Harvard Yard need their next couple of repointings. Called the Stata Center, it is located on Vassar Street, near Main, in Cambridge and is at the top of my list of recommended destinations for visitors, even above our beloved Yard. The place is simply fascinating.  September 11, 2010
Eva Razvenkova Steve Knapp has been a friend to me since before he was old enough to know what a friend is. He and wife Julia have asked me to extend their time-sensitive appeal for help with the medical needs of Julia's friend's daughter in Belarus. They each contributed a month's salary. I made a very modest contribution. The baby's name is Eva Razvenkova, and she has a compelling case: HealthyBabyEva.com. 
My photos may be used for training purposes
September 9, 2010 Not to train photographers! Got a request today from a ranking local firefighter for permission to use my most recent fire photos. Sent him the whole batch. Glad to be of service, Cap'n. I always get a kick out of doing a neighbor a good turn —at least when it's this easy, I do! Which is not to say I wouldn't have tried to sell them to a news outfit, if I had held a better camera when I took them. Earth Tales from Around the World September 8, 2010 
An highly dedicated and professional environmentalist, Michael Caduto, has just asked me to spread the word, through this video he has posted, about the fundraising efforts in which he is currently engaged through the distribution of Earth Tales from Around the World CD's. I don't know much about the environment and know less about raising money to save the earth, but I am pretty darn sure about one thing about our planet: There isn't anybody more honest than Michael Caduto on it.
Michael's website is p-e-a-c-e.net. "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" September 7, 2010 We watched this 2008 movie this evening. When I first saw the cover of the DVD yesterday, I called it a chick flick and was sure that I wouldn't hang around the television too long for this one. I watched it through and enjoyed it; it was a better than average fairytale-like comedy, probably because of the actors and the care taken with the costumes and sets. The movie is set in the 1930's, and, after watching it, I suggested that it reminded me of the movies of 30's in which plot and dialogue were oversimplified, with expectations that the audience would follow everything, for the sake of moving along the comedy or pathos or whatever drama that the story held. I further said that this movie, with its interaction of just a few characters within a short time-span (It happens in twenty-four hours.) reminded me of "Dinner at Eight," a blockbuster of 1933 and one of my favorite moving pictures. Then we watched the special features and learned that the yarn was written by Winifred Watson in the '30's; that the movie rights were bought by Universal in the '30's; and that Billie Burke was supposed to have the starring role. We are then reminded by the special features that Billie Burke was the good witch in "The Wizard of Oz." Of course, those of us who are Golden Era Hollywood buffs do not think of Billie Burke as the Good Witch. She is first and foremost the hostess of the "Dinner at Eight" and Flo Ziegfeld's wife. It was a hoot for me to intuit a relationship of the two movies made seventy-five years apart. This movie is not "Dinner at Eight," and this is not 1933. That said, it's a light-duty and successful comedy. It can compare itself in stature to that great movie in only one regard. "Dinner at Eight" had the Barrymores and Marie Drexler. Frances McDormand, the lead in this one, is in my opinion one of our great actors. In every role I've seen, she is completely believable, undeniably compelling, and has the sublime self-confidence that puts her in league with others whom the cameras adore perforce, like James Garner, Shirley MacLaine, and sometimes Jack Nicholson. Dealing with jerks September 6, 2010, Labor Day On Saturday, I had the misfortune of having to deal with the stupidity and rudeness of a couple of people. Two old acquaintances asked me to meet them at a location a few dozen miles away from Cambridge for an activity that required much preparation; just before I was about to leave, I got a call from a cellphone informing me that they were not at the planned location but on the highway toward another activity. That news was an annoying inconvenience not only to me but also to another couple of people not directly involved. It ought to be manifest that a jerk often does not know he is being a jerk, but I am such a slow or reluctant learner that I am regularly startled that rude, thoughtless people are usually blissfully and sometimes willfully ignorant of their stupidity. Which fact gives me pause to wonder how bright I could possibly be to be unable to learn such a simple, commonplace fact of life! The one thing that I have successfully learned, however, is that it is generally much easier to deal with an unreasonable person who acknowledges that he is or has been unreasonable than one who lacks the courage or native intelligence to do so. I regularly make a fool of myself and therefore feel that I have enough experience to speak to the subject. I submit that, when a man makes a mistake, it is more pleasant for all concerned —especially himself— that he faces the music, i.e., apologizes, and moves on. Would that folks around us and all around our planet thought enough of their own lives to enjoy that comfort. 
Went to an Eagle Scout ceremony
September 5, 2010 The Boy Scout son of an old saddle pard, along with another fellow, was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout today. The Court of Honor was more serious than I would have guessed these things were, but on the other hand there was apparently a lot more requirement of time and effort in achieving the rank than I knew. The young man, in addition to fulfilling a lot of other requirements, took on as his final project an oral history of several WWII vets and recorded those histories on CD's now available to the public. Nice work, Aaron! I wore a rare badge that used to be on my Boy Scout shirt; one of the Scout leaders had the same patch. 
Getting new old cameras
September 4, 2010 I've been surfing the Craiglist photo section lately to find carry-around cameras that are a little better than the ones that have taken most of the photos that I have on the web. I decided to upgrade a bit when I found that the Cambridge Chronicle ran one of my pics for their report of a recent fire but did not use it in the print copy, I presume because the resolution was too low. That happenstance —along with the obvious fact that I need better resolution for things like this Red-spotted Purple butterfly— warrants upgrades in my knockabout cameras. Fire on Hubbard Ave. in Cambridge — Photos August 27, 2010 Hearing sirens stop near where I was working, I went to investigate. 
Boy Scout Notes for Aaron
August, 2010 Some droll quotes I compiled for a pal's son. What's up with those orange things? August 11, 2010 My ten reasons for growing tomatoes upside-down. Dead Memory Day August 8, 2010 Comprising a few photos of sites of my childhood, this webpage is a small exercise in documenting how the touchstones of one's past disappear. 
Some Goldfish!
June 2, 2010 Goldfish —or so I thought— in Walden Pond.
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