tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41908708695812018942024-03-13T02:37:36.434-04:00Waiting for HungryThe mind/body problem: how did this mind get this body?David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-79367833475509883662011-11-13T08:31:00.001-05:002011-11-13T08:34:51.560-05:00The Way We Read, or, Tuba Time<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">(I wrote this in 1999 after my second Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. It appeared in <i>Riding the Meridian</i> as part of a longer piece, "Bread Loaf Diaries." )</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The entire enterprise of public poetry readings is a painful one</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">for me. When I first began performing my own work, a friend, an</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">elderly Maine poet named Wilbert Snow, saw how much I was enjoying it</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">and warned me, wagging his finger. "Creative contact with an audience</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">can destroy a poet. Look what happened to Vachel Lindsay!" That was 25</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">years ago, and I have still never looked up what happened to Vachel</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Lindsay, lest it stop me from giving readings.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I love reading my own poetry in public, and I get compliments when I</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">do. I take no credit for this; I attribute it to the fact that my</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">poems are frequently comical, and therefore out of the mainstream.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Audiences know what to do about funny poetry: they laugh. Everyone</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">knows their part, and it is comfortable. But most American poetry and</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">poetry readings are deadly serious, painfully intimate, like a</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">prostate exam, dreadful but necessary, 90% embarrassment and 10%</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">unexpected thrill.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">In case you have never attended a poetry reading let me describe one.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Imagine you have taken your sweetheart out for an evening of chamber</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">music at the local arts center. You join forty or fifty</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">highly-educated adults seated on folding chairs and wait politely. The</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">hour arrives. But instead of a tuxedoed string quartet, in comes an</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">11-year-old boy, dressed like Jimmy Olson on a bad bowtie day, wearing</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">a tuba, carrying a baseball bat, and with an overstuffed dimestore</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">photo album tucked under his arm.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The audience applauds. For his first piece, the boy--we'll call him</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">"the poet"--plays a brief series of scales on the tuba. The audience</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">takes a deep breath and holds it. The poet misunderstands this as a</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">signal to proceed, so he favors us with a second creation: he opens</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">his tuba's spit valve to eject a bubbly stream of sputum and</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">condensation, which splatters on the floor.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The audience, in rhythmic unison, sits perfectly still. Pleased that</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">he has been so entertaining, the poet drops his tuba and shoulders his</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">bat. He takes a few tentative practice strokes, swings for the fences</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">and smashes the bat into his own forehead. The audience averts its</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">gaze as he bleeds for several stanzas. The audience stares at the</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">ceiling, then at the floor. Thus encouraged, the poet, for a grand</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">finale, opens the photo album, which turns out to contain not</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">snapshots, but X-ray films, all revealing metastatic cancer in the</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">bodies of the poet's loved ones: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">wives, children, self, and historical figures. The audience stares and</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">gasps. Some weep, some snore. The poet closes the album, steps back</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">from the podium, bows. The reading is over. There is applause.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">There are a dozen more readings to go this week. I can't wait.</span>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-36482377353745601842011-11-06T16:42:00.004-05:002011-11-06T16:50:57.111-05:00A periodic table of the experiences<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZe8qb_zzWAppOuv0m3E33xxxhXhI3-CHip-fTd_8yHKPrxin1fgEQNNb1AJ6ZekQ-dgRFPMFWnACpNOWuEoE-nMRT2NNslF0JpB_laGICpsdHF1wVA_xf8TvixWeUEPz-_5zqpse6HH7M/s1600/elements.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZe8qb_zzWAppOuv0m3E33xxxhXhI3-CHip-fTd_8yHKPrxin1fgEQNNb1AJ6ZekQ-dgRFPMFWnACpNOWuEoE-nMRT2NNslF0JpB_laGICpsdHF1wVA_xf8TvixWeUEPz-_5zqpse6HH7M/s320/elements.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">All 92 elements, attractively<br />
displayed, available at <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">www.element-collection.com.</span><br />
Worried about the radium,<br />
uranium and thorium? They also<br />
sell a radiation monitor.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All this collecting talk reminds me of a brilliant freelance physicist I once knew who was assembling a collection of all the natural elements in the periodic table. I sent an email to ask about his motives and methods. He answered within minutes with a firm "No comment." </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nobody's required to answer random importunate questions from near-strangers, but I was disappointed. Otherwise, I would never mention the time that he accidentally inhaled a snootful of tellurium powder and had to be rushed to the hospital for chelation therapy. Tellurium, if it does not kill you, gives a distinctive garlic odor to the breath that has been known to last for months. I'm sure it's gone by now.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But objects aren't the only thing you can collect. You can collect experiences, you can make a bucket list and go fill your bucket with your heart's desire. Wikipedia, a staggeringly vast collection in its own right, says “An alternative to collecting physical objects is collecting experiences of some kind, through observation or photography. Examples include bird-watching; transportation, e.g. train spotting, aircraft spotting, metrophiles, bus spotting, see also I-Spy; and visiting continents, countries, states, counties, and national parks....”</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> OF SOME KIND</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">All the trains spotted, every state stepped in,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">all the birds you have seen, did they see you?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">And now think of all the girls you have kissed,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">through observation or photography,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">or boys, and exactly how they tasted,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">and how few wanted even one more kiss.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Experience collects us, brings us back</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">to be stored dry, neat in a wide flat drawer,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">but when the drawers are full, piles us up</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">in closets, in stacks of old wine cartons,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">in a clutter in his heart, in a horde</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">of life to be relived.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> I don’t talk this way.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">This is something new for me, this sounding</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">like epitaphs, like sermons on gray stone.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Sunday they pointed out where I’ll be buried</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">in Waitsfield, just up from the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">Mad</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">River</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">with all the rest of the family, all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt;">It didn’t seem to bother them a bit.</span></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-9167148479691774532011-10-30T10:59:00.000-04:002011-10-30T10:59:29.854-04:00While you're waiting for me, a poem by Marcus Bales<div class="uiHeader uiHeaderBottomBorder mbm" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding-bottom: 0.5em; text-align: left;"><div class="clearfix uiHeaderTop" style="zoom: 1;"><div><h2 class="uiHeaderTitle" style="color: #1c2a47; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Thank you, Marcus. Guilty as charged. Stay tuned.</span></h2><div><br />
</div><h2 class="uiHeaderTitle" style="color: #1c2a47; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><br />
</h2><h2 class="uiHeaderTitle" style="color: #1c2a47; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><br />
</h2><h2 class="uiHeaderTitle" style="color: #1c2a47; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Villanelle: Waiting for Hungry</h2></div></div><div class="clearfix" style="zoom: 1;"><div class="mbs uiHeaderSubTitle lfloat fsm fwn fcg" style="color: grey; float: left; margin-bottom: 5px;">by <a href="http://www.facebook.com/marcus.bales" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Marcus Bales</a> </div><div class="mbs uiHeaderSubTitle lfloat fsm fwn fcg" style="color: grey; float: left; margin-bottom: 5px;"><br />
</div><div class="mbs uiHeaderSubTitle lfloat fsm fwn fcg" style="color: grey; float: left; margin-bottom: 5px;"><br />
</div><div class="uiHeaderSubActions rfloat" style="float: right;"></div></div></div><div class="mbl notesBlogText clearfix" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 20px; text-align: left; word-wrap: break-word; zoom: 1;"><div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><em>"I will write here every day, and there will be only one excuse for not blogging, and that will be writing poetry" – David Weinstock, http://waitingforhungry.blogspot.com/2011/09/sliver-time.html</em></div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">David promised he would speak</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">A little every single day</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">But we've been waiting for a week.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">He'll probably say I've got some cheek</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">To chide him like a child this way:</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">David promised he would speak.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">His backlog's big -- a little tweak</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">Of something old would be okay</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">Since we've been waiting for a week.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">I know he isn't really meek:</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">He's slashed me like a limp fillet,</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">When David promised he would speak.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">I hope he's on a writing streak,</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">And too intent for mere display --</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">But we've been waiting for a week!</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">Perhaps there'll be a little leak</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">On Facebook -- we can only pray,</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">Since David promised he would speak.</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">Our present prospects still seem bleak:</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">After all, he gets no pay;</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">But David promised he would speak --</div><div style="line-height: 1.5em;">And we've been waiting for a week.</div></div><div><br />
</div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-23547730153153420092011-10-21T22:38:00.003-04:002011-10-22T00:09:15.853-04:00CAUTION: OBTUSE SIGNAGE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCKV_SD5ctJYQ8nE8cWBXabv70gH8IJKrm49ZQxwEhw0QKFtghS5ZQys1mCD4UQHpxblmp7m0TgZIWsNGSBhC23AC-6OefXr1wEX0f4Cp6dhudI2hOC_0hHo5mW4iPXv_L9dEftAkf1zcU/s1600/1020-CAUTION-EXOTIC-ANIMALS_full_380+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCKV_SD5ctJYQ8nE8cWBXabv70gH8IJKrm49ZQxwEhw0QKFtghS5ZQys1mCD4UQHpxblmp7m0TgZIWsNGSBhC23AC-6OefXr1wEX0f4Cp6dhudI2hOC_0hHo5mW4iPXv_L9dEftAkf1zcU/s320/1020-CAUTION-EXOTIC-ANIMALS_full_380+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>You can't blame the Zanesville authorities for the complete non-communicativeness of this sign. They had a real live emergency on their hands, and hardly had time to call in a team of copywriters and poets for a proper brainstorm. But now that it's over, in preparation for the next time, let's create a better message.<br />
<br />
Don't think it's going to be easy, either. This sign is a strict form. Three lines, seven characters max per line. That's tighter than haiku. It would take six or seven of them to add up to one 140-character Twitter tweet.<br />
<br />
So here's your assignment,which could go two ways.<br />
1) Compose a highway sign that will actually prevent collisions and save lives with a useful warning.<br />
or 2) Write the coolest sign imaginable.<br />
<br />
Got it? I'll go first:<br />
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>ZBRA XNG</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>NEXT 3 MI</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>GO SLOW</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>DANGER</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>LOOSE</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>ANIMALS</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>LIONS</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>TIGERS</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>BEAR O MY</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Now your turn. If my comments box gives you any trouble, email sign copy to me at david.weinstock@gmaill.om</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-60147312867913759762011-10-21T00:32:00.005-04:002011-10-21T07:55:01.623-04:00The Button List<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPKuGrkFICPHqhEw6gO8v8DVToP4_PYKFKTuBzk28HrsTTqWF6oRmhdKALHRjUBGwgEMRhD-8HTC-Qf8NS4DA9GkDOxw7lT2t4dzfnzBxLNKAqAFTEZi8liWNIPlmqDDUKgKiLiZnS84wV/s1600/button.jpg" /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Fifty-six men, including John Hancock, put their John Hancocks on the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Collectively they are known as The Signers. In 1833, William Buell Sprague, who was not born until nearly 20 years after the Declaration, invented a new hobby: collecting the signatures of all 56 signers. There are two things that need to be said about this.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One is that inventing a hobby for yourself is an admirable achievement. But inventing a hobby for other people to follow...I don't know. It seems like an odd and slightly sketchy act, nearly anti-social. I say this on a hunch and practically no evidence, so I could be wrong; I welcome your counterexamples.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second is that by defining the set to be collected so precisely, Sprague set in motion a long-term rise in the price in the autographs of all the signers. Some signatures were relatively easy to find, some were less common. But the scarcest of all is that of Georgia delegate Button Gwinnett.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why? Because Gwinnett, during his 41 years of life before the Signing, for whatever reason, happens not to have put his signature on many pieces of parchment or paper that survived. Nor could he do so afterward, as he was fatally wounded in a duel in 1777. Unlike signer Ben Franklin, who lived twice as long and seems to have spent nearly every waking minute writing letters, Signer Gwinnett didn't sign much of anything else.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That made Button Gwinnett's signature the Babe Ruth rookie card of the Signer list, the rarest and hardest to find, even if you are willing to spend a fortune. The latest Button sig changed hands for over $750,000.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Every collection of any kind that is based on a list will include one Button, one piece more rare than the others. And if very many people are clutching the same scavenger hunt list, it's just the law of supply and demand. The rare piece soars in price, because everybody's got to have it. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In book collecting, the Button is the first edition of the first book of a very famous author before he got famous, so published in a small press run. In comic books, it's Spiderman #1, because Marvel was a fringey company and because Spidey was such a jerk. And if it is your heart's desire to own </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">one license plate from every state, your Button is Hawaii. Nobody drives here from Hawaii.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-81191514847685874382011-10-19T15:59:00.003-04:002011-10-19T21:31:12.330-04:00Cover Story<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span><br />
<div><i>Chatting with poet friends about the relative merits of different approaches to writing cover letters for manuscript submissions, I came up with the ultimate cover letter. I don't think I will be actually sending it.</i></div><div><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dear Editor,<br />
<br />
Thank the man who delivers this,<br />
he has risked his life for art.<br />
I am being held by the Taliban,<br />
or possibly the CIA, hard to tell,</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in a tiny bamboo cage somewhere<br />
I am not sure where but it is hot<br />
and dusty, and I am hot and dusty<br />
and the only thing that keeps me alive<br />
is writing poetry and hoping<br />
it will appear in a journal like yours.<br />
My guards let me out of my cage</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">five times a day for prayer</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and if I were a Muslim I would pray<br />
but instead I use the time<br />
writing poems in the dust with a stick<br />
where my friend finds them<br />
and writes them on cigarette papers<br />
that are easily concealed<br />
and after they have served their purpose<br />
can be filled with tobacco and smoked.<br />
You living in America can have no idea<br />
of how much people smoke around here,<br />
wherever that is. They roll their own<br />
but prefer American cigarettes<br />
when they can get them. I don't doubt<br />
that I could buy my freedom for as little<br />
as two cartons of Marlboros<br />
but did not think to bring any with me<br />
as I was being kidnapped. I am not,<br />
I must assure you, an MFA candidate,<br />
nor a professor of creative writing,<br />
not a careerist full of ambition, no.<br />
My only ambition is to survive<br />
and someday, inshallah, see a copy<br />
of your journal containing even one<br />
of the poems before you now, <br />
and I cannot rule out the possibility<br />
that if my poems appear in your journal,<br />
it will focus attention on my captivity<br />
that might save my life. I hope<br />
you like the poems.<br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Best,<br />
David Weinstock<br />
Somewhere hot and dusty</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #888888;"></span></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-29599100089241418062011-10-19T00:14:00.004-04:002011-10-23T00:48:11.504-04:00To get from Aardvark to Army, you must go through Alabama and Alaric<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq1L1nfhchqWVJuHqKrzs056MkSX6fZ-KAePo3quYBPWfLZueJOY6XoF95doHUkLV3RU9dt_8mkJ1t3tDd0tcD2Jpa81Qerz7VMIE5ydw8jIzQ2XLXezPjSOiWxtQbqiuz3oE6O6yyZyiC/s1600/Aardvark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq1L1nfhchqWVJuHqKrzs056MkSX6fZ-KAePo3quYBPWfLZueJOY6XoF95doHUkLV3RU9dt_8mkJ1t3tDd0tcD2Jpa81Qerz7VMIE5ydw8jIzQ2XLXezPjSOiWxtQbqiuz3oE6O6yyZyiC/s1600/Aardvark.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">I promised to write more about collecting, and the urge to "Collect the Whole Set!" which is an idea that animates and energizes a surprisingly large segment of the economy, as I learned during the two years I accidentally spent in the world of investment-grade rare coins. But actually, I already knew it from an earlier experience.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Remember how supermarkets would sell encyclopedias, with a new volume available every week? The first volume was priced very low to get shopper and child hooked. My mother bought me Volume 1 (Aardvark-Army) of the Golden Book Encyclopedia for 49 cents, and proceeded faithfully to buy the rest of the set until I had all 16, and I pretty much read them all, skipping only the long articles about each state, always accompanied by a map dotted with little symbols of whatever that state grew or dug or manufactured. I did not care, I still do not care, what they grow or dig or build in Alabama. (I am however very interested in how Alabama is going to grow, dig or make anything when it starts to enforce its lunatic new immigration laws.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And then there was Alaric, king of the Visigoths. Every supermarket encyclopedia since Gutenberg includes an article on Alaric, a fact which was not lost on a man named Alaric whom I met in Cambridge in the late 1970s.. When I told him I knew his name from my encyclopedia, he revealed that he had purchased dozens of Volume Ones from many different sets, at great introductory prices, just to have the Alaric articles. From him I learned that not everybody needs or wants to "Collect the Whole Set." This discovery has influenced my own collecting life, on which I will say more soon.</div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-13401142311653751842011-10-14T17:28:00.002-04:002011-10-14T17:28:40.358-04:00GO BAG<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">GO BAG</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">You should have a bag already packed</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">with what you’ll need if the worst should happen.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Keep it in your car. Never leave without it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">It is your only chance to make it through.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Clothing for all conditions: think layers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Think hot, cold, camouflage, and funerals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">First aid, medications, comforting books,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">weapons, a flashlight, and means of escape,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">and food, food enough, for how many days?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I cannot answer that. The rest of your life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Imagine that much food fitting in one bag.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">You could not carry that bag very far.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">When the bag is empty, fold it up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Discard it safely where no one can find.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Undress. Disarm. Stay where you are right now.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The worst has already happened</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-52775057788643645572011-10-12T15:22:00.005-04:002011-10-23T00:48:46.545-04:00Science should be popularized<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoXH-fH3jd2VR4Al-dPHBnpYtTeHLWZuNL0eHDiFTf1UGwjc5WCLd99i13B_0Rn-A-bNm5uFKLtCELlUgzaBicrs9mbmqJSbfgufK6zvzFhVs8z_cH82Tp8Ye1CMh6ig-CtwMz4TTVz1MJ/s1600/relativity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoXH-fH3jd2VR4Al-dPHBnpYtTeHLWZuNL0eHDiFTf1UGwjc5WCLd99i13B_0Rn-A-bNm5uFKLtCELlUgzaBicrs9mbmqJSbfgufK6zvzFhVs8z_cH82Tp8Ye1CMh6ig-CtwMz4TTVz1MJ/s1600/relativity.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">RELATIVITY FOR THE MILLION,<br />
by Martin Gardner (1962)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writers who "popularize" science for the rest of us--Lucretius, George Gamow, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, Gina Kolata, Rebecca Skloot--are sometimes looked down upon, but I look up to them all. Science is way too important to be left to the scientists. If more writers were explaining climate change and global warming right now, there might be fewer politicians talking nonsense about it.</span><br />
<div><br />
<div><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1962, when it was still being said that only a dozen people in the world understood Einstein's theory of relativity, Martin Gardner (1914-2010) brought out a book, <i>Relativity for the Million</i>, that a 10-year-old could read, so I did. My favorite part was about how the Michelson-Morley experiment disproved the existence of the ether wind. </span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also devoured Gardner's books of mathematical games and puzzles, drawn from his <i>Scientific American</i> columns, and <i>The Annotated Alice </i>edition of <i>Alice in Wonderland </i>and <i>Through the Looking Glass</i>, which contains hundreds of what may be the most enjoyable footnotes ever written.*</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've been thinking about other books I read as a child. I had absolute permission from my parents to read any book I found, as if they could have stopped me. I seem to have opened up every book in the house, although if it was boring or too far over my head I would put it back down after a few pages. In adult life since I have often started a book and instantly realized that I'd already read the first couple of pages decades before.**</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But here's the thing I really wanted to say. Martin Gardner was one of my favorite writers, and he was quite prolific, with dozens of books to his credit. Why have I read only a few? Why haven't I collected them all?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some readers and many book collectors just "Gotta catch 'em all." Gardner's list would be both achievable and affordable, especially if I opted for "reading copies" instead of first editions in mint condition. I know of a collector who did that for Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, finding every possible edition and translations in every language from 1776 onward.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that's not how I read or buy. I find a book I like and read it again and again. I have read the entire oeuvre of very few writers I care about, and only if their corpus is relatively small and important. James Joyce? I've read all five books. JK Rowling? All seven. Isaac Asimov? If anybody in the entire world has read every one of his more than 500 books, I'd like to meet him.*** Or her.**** </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Next time, more about those who, as the cereal boxes used to say, "Collect the whole set!" and what's the difference between fastidious collecting and obsessive-compulsive disorder.</i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div>* I have decided that all footnotes ought to be extremely entertaining. Sorry about this one..</div><div>** There is some dispute about whether there is any such thing as a photographic memory. I read that somewhere. </div><div>*** If you are that person, I will buy you lunch and hear your explanation for this bizarre act of fandom.</div><div>**** You also get lunch, but will have even more to explain.</div><div><div><br />
</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-43057858081144532132011-10-08T16:01:00.007-04:002011-10-08T22:17:58.751-04:00Why I Don't Own an iPad 4, or, Libidinal Confessions of a Late Adopter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcKuRDAww3Psg-GrfA6y3NzCLB9DZXv_7L3urKbnwMveiP2P7tPZkxKOKDdZ20BDY5j4LS8w6uIePBbbJgtIx6Y_8WImSX86IDYD-MKisxjcOcp-q6qu-EkPEAI95LVjTVFHVrQZL-dYac/s320/carb.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="256" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A CARBURETOR. Cars don't have<br />
carbs anymore, but lawnmowers do.<br />
Not until carburetors have become<br />
completely obsolete will I love them.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Whoa! Did seeing "iPad 4" in the title make you leap up and grab the car keys? Simmer down. There is no iPad 4, not yet. And you, Sir or Madam (but most probably Sir because it's a guy thing), are officially an Early Adopter. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Me, I'm a Late Adopter. You won't find me camped outside the Apple store the night before a release date. On the spectrum between early adopters, who are always the first to snap up new technology, and Luddites who would rather smash it than buy it, I am somewhere in between. You can have tomorrow's technology, I want yesterday's. Or better yet, yesteryear's.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I got my 1945 Leica IIIc camera in 1965, my 1946 Hallicrafters SX-25 shortwave receiver in 1966, and my 1956 Buick Super in 1970. All three were gifts from my father, but I continued in the same vein, with Ann's kind encouragement, culminating with a 1913 Chandler & Price 10 x 15 printing press, acquired in 1984. We also harbor an Ivers & Pond upright piano built in the late 19th century and fully restored for the 21st.*</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One reason to be a late adopter is that it's cheaper, anywhere from 25% during the clearance sale down to half price on eBay. Or even better, a prematurely jaded early adopter gives you a superseded model for free because it is <i>so</i> last week and he wouldn't be caught dead. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">True, a few categories of old things become more expensive rather than cheaper with age, and in a future post I will tell all I know about the charms of rare books, the darker side of rare coins, and other variations of tulip bulb madness. But old technology usually holds little allure for collectors. Bulky, heavy, inconvenient objects like printing presses and parlor pianos typically change hands on the basis of "Get this damn thing out of my garage and it's yours."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another reason to prefer older tech to new is that, at least until recently, older equipment can be repaired. Its parts are discrete and visible. Before the extreme miniaturization into silicon chips of even the most complex gadgets. it was possible to take things apart, discover what had failed, and replace it. Parts may be hard to find, but the satisfaction is great when it works. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The repairability of old machines, however, is not guaranteed, and there can be a great deal of self-delusion about it, verging on compulsive hoarding disorder, which has recently become the subject of not one but two popular and horrifying reality shows. Ham radio hobbyists notoriously keep "junk boxes" because you never know when some tube or capacitor might be just what you need to fix something else. But junk boxes all too easily can became junk basements, junk garages and junk barns, and well, a junked-up life.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why do we do it? "It is the libidinization of stuff," Cambridge psychologist Lucia Stone told me, adding that it is far more common in men, and she ought to have known. Her husband, Fred Stone, was a magnificent acquisitor of nearly everything, including wood and lead printing type, vintage glass bottles, old buttons, and World War II airplane parts. Fred was the kind of guy who gave materialism a good name. The type that overflowed the basement was stored in a makeshift shed Fred lovingly built in his backyard from military surplus magnesium aircraft frames. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wish I had been there, standing slightly upwind from the plume of fragrant and poisonous fumes, the day that shed caught on fire.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But I digress, yes I do, digression upon digression, and I intend to continue. Stay tuned.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">************************************************************************</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>*The piano was restored by Emily and Ed Hilbert of New Haven, Vermont. We schlepped it to California, where a piano tuner tried to buy it from us, and then hauled it back to Middlebury where it may be viewed by appointment.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>**Fred Stone's collection of 19th and early 20th century wood type ("Take it all! Just take it!") went from his basement in Cambridge to mine in Somerville, then to our next basement in Waterville, Maine, and finally to the Art Department at Smith College, where we hope to visit it someday soon. </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><br />
</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-88649150492424568292011-10-05T19:59:00.005-04:002011-10-06T18:36:28.231-04:00Relics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My friend Charlie, a martyr but no saint, collected relics, principally by stealing them. To his credit, he always chose objects far too small to be missed. Once, in the Smithsonian Air and <st1:place><st1:placename>Space</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Museum</st1:placetype></st1:place>, pre-renovation, he reached up and pinched off a tiny scrappet of rubber gasketing from the fuselage of the <st1:city><st1:place>Hiroshima</st1:place></st1:city> bomber Enola Gay. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another time, he found a little deposit of paper bits in Emily Dickinson's writing desk at Harvard's Houghton Library. They were broken-off corners and edges of her writing paper, maybe her poems. It was sacred confetti. Charlie swept it into a plastic bag and kept it for years.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Soon after I married Ann, Charlie presented her with an orange smidge of broken brick, the size and color of an unripe cranberry. He told us it came from the rubble of <st1:city><st1:place>Cambridge</st1:place></st1:city>'s ancient jail, where Ann's ancestor, the witch Martha Carrier, was held before her execution by hanging in 1692.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Charlie had so little and wanted so much that I naturally wished to contribute to his collection of micro-relics. One day, on a walk, I picked him up a pair of sea pebbles from one of his holy places, <st1:place><st1:placename>Nauset</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Beach</st1:placetype></st1:place>, by Marconi Station in the Cape Cod National Seashore.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Charlie was from <st1:place>Cape Cod</st1:place>. He was estranged from his family, and wasn't keen on human beings generally. But he honored this particular place for being uninhabited, bleak, and windy. He would have lived there if he could, tenting in the lee of a dune, free at last from the tyranny of landlord and roommate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Marconi chose Nauset for his radio experiments for similar reasons. It was barren table land overlooking the sea, with an unobstructed path to <st1:country-region><st1:place>England</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and it was vast. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Marconi's signals, his radio waves, were big and floppy. By wingspan, if you think of today's compact little frequencies as sandpipers, Marconi's emissions were wandering albatrosses. Coming in for a landing, Marconi's trans-Atlantic flocks of di-di-dit could not be expected to perch comfortably on much less than a quarter mile length of aerial wire. His frequencies were so low, in fact, and their wavelengths so long, that for decades afterward, any useful frequency shorter than a football field would be known as "short-wave."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Charlie's pantheon of higher beings, Marconi was in fact what Charlie himself wished to be, a truly important self-educated tinkerer. No higher calling could exist, unless it were friend or parent. Charlie would rather have invented a new ice-ax than find a cure for cancer, or war, especially not war, which intrigued him as the human activity calling tinkerers to their most heroic feats of ingenuity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In his mind if not in fact, Charlie could field-strip and reassemble a Panzer tank. If you left him alone in your basement, he would find a tool you had thought was lost, and take it apart for cleaning and polishing. He would never tell you he was about to do this, or that he had done it, but he did usually attach a note. Years later I am still finding posthumous notes from Charlie, tied with sturdy tent-repair thread to the handle of a wire stripper, or tucked inside the leather case of a voltmeter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One day, exploring the Houghton Library treasure</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">room, he found a pair of dueling pistols that had belonged to George Washington. They were not, in his opinion, being properly cared for. He did not steal them--they did not fit his collecting strategy. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But he did immediately appoint himself as their rightful curator and conservationist. (This would have shocked the trusting library director who had hired him as a part-time security guard and issued him the key.) Charlie unpacked the pistols, cleaned them as thoroughly as if he were seconding a duel at daybreak, and left them shimmering with preserving oil. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Back from the <st1:place>Cape</st1:place>, I ran into Charlie on the street, and pulled the two stones out of my backpack. They were flat, round, surf-polished cookies of dove-gray basalt. He took one in each hand, and squeezed them for a long time, with his eyes closed. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Uploading," he said. "Uploading."</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">**************************************************</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>In memory of Charles A. Reynolds, 1945-1997</i></span></div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-70356295671578644462011-10-04T16:37:00.006-04:002011-10-23T00:49:33.169-04:00My first and last language<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One April, for National Poetry Month, I invited a respected poet to visit my poetry workshop as a guest speaker. She is a distinguished teacher/scholar and and no shrinking violet, but she suddenly expressed a lack of confidence in her public speaking skills. "David," she explained, "English is my <i>fifth</i> language!" </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She did eventually accept, and on the day of her talk she held forth in flawless though Chinese-accented English for an hour. At one point she actually used the word "instantiation," which I had to look up, and English is my first language. Unfortunately, I fear, it will also be my last.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's not for lack of trying. I have formally studied four languages, Hebrew, German, Spanish and Russian, and cannot speak any of them. I am tongue-tied in four tongues all at once, if you can picture that.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hebrew school, of course, was never actually intended to make me chatter like an Israeli. The aim instead was teaching me to pray in a language God could understand. After four years, six hours a week, I know dozens of blessings and prayers and psalms and songs, although not necessarily what they mean or how they mean it. Some of what I memorized, I discovered much later, wasn't Hebrew at all but Aramaic, which come to think of it is another language God understands, see Matthew 27:46. Shows how little Hebrew I grasped, if I couldn't detect when we switched into Aramaic.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Three years of high school Spanish really ought to have given me some ability to converse, with all those dialogs and drills and language labs. But although I could play back a dialog--"Where is the library?"-- I couldn't carry on an actual conversation. It only took five minutes in Barcelona to make it clear that I was a natural-born monoglot. I could barely order almuerzo.*</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Next I took a reading course in German because I wanted to understand Rilke, and that worked out as well as you'd expect--who understands Rilke? I absolutely love German but definitely can't speak it. When occasionally I attempt a word of German out loud to a native speaker, I get only <span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333;"><span class="hps">verständnislose</span> <span class="hps">Blicke.**</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333;"><span class="hps" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Mind you, my disability in Spanish and German is about speaking; in both languages I can usefully read ordinary text, if not mystical poetry. But Russian was different. After two semesters plus a summer at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow and Leningrad. I couldn't really read or talk. I understood barely half of what was said to me, and the Russians caught even less of what I said, which invariably caused them to switch to English, which is what they had wanted to do in the first place. Everyone in the Soviet Union was mad for English and Western culture and consumer goods. "Peenk Floyd?" they would ask, fishing for forbidden music, and "Troozya?" </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">Troozya? Troozya, I eventually deduced, meant trousers, which at that delicate moment in US-Soviet relations meant that they would pay many rubles for my blue jeans. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">Would I sell them my blue jeans? "Da!"***</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">It doesn't add up. In English, I am handy with words and have lived by my pen. I possess a good ear, an easy style, and a vocabulary twice as large as anyone needs, even to play Scrabble. I can give a speech to a large audience without looking at my notes. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">Why can't I talk foreign? </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I blame a lifelong aversion to going through that painful but necessary phase of language learning when one makes mistakes and more mistakes, commits howlers in public, and gets frustrated and flustered and laughed at for sounding like an idiot. Even as a toddler, I'm told, I hated to babble. "You never talked baby talk," says my mother, a longtime elementary school teacher. "You weren't going to talk until you were good and ready. Then one day, full sentences!"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At age two, I could have it both ways: dignified and fluent. Ever since, apparently not. But I keep thinking how interesting it would be to learn Arabic. Inshallah!****</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">*Lunch</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">** Uncomprehending stares</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">*** Yes.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">****God willing.</span></span><br />
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</span></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-84198984301594145722011-10-02T19:25:00.006-04:002011-10-02T21:18:01.987-04:00They are your houses<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"></span></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">All week long I've been getting into arguments with friends and strangers about the Occupy Wall Street protests. I'm not sure why I'm so bothered about it but I can't seem to shut up. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">Partly it is the incessant whining about "media blackouts" that seemed not to notice the literally thousands of news stories about the events. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">Partly it is the group's evident lack of ideological or programmatic focus. Not that they're not trying. Even as the protests were in full swing, the Coup Media website was polling supporters (and anyone else who happened onto the site) to find out what their demands should be. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">The list of candidate positions weirdly includes not only perfectly understandable wishes like free college education for all and nationalized health care but also the repeal of the 16th Amendment (which allowed the federal income tax) and re-opening the investigation of the 9/11 attacks. (Here is the full list: </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://coupmedia.org/the-sovereign-peoples-movement.html">http://coupmedia.org/the-sovereign-peoples-movement.html</a> )</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">But mostly I suppose I'm comparing </span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">Occupy Wall Street</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> to another ongoing protest, the one against the Tar Sands Pipeline. I love their well-rehearsed discipline, their laser focus on a specific issue, and their orderly and methodical way of getting themselves arrested, one after another, by the hundreds, outside the White House. It made me proud of leaders like Bill McKibben and Chris Shaw for knowing what they are talking about and getting the world to listen.</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><br />
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<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; white-space: pre;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">And finally, I am remembering a poem by Richard Wilbur, who would later be my teacher, written in spring of 1970 for the Wesleyan Strike News. There's a sentence I can't forget, as I think of the houses bought with the mortgages that spawned the current Wall Street crisis. "They are your houses."</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">FOR THE </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">STUDENT STRIKERS</span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; white-space: pre;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">by</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; white-space: pre;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">RICHARD WILBUR</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; white-space: pre;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">Go talk with those who are rumored to be unlike you</span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">and whom, it is said, you are so unlike.</span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">Stand on the stoops of their houses and tell them why</span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">You are out on strike.</span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.5pt;">It is not time for the rock, the bullet, the blunt</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Slogan that fuddles the mind toward force.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Let the new sound of our streets be the patient sound</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Of our discourse. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Doors will be shut in your faces, I do not doubt.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Yet here and there, it may be, there will start,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Much as the lights blink on in a block at evening,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Changes of heart. </span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">They are your houses; the people are not unlike you;</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Talk with them then and let it be done</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Even for the grey wife of your nightmare sheriff</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">And the guardsman's son. </span></div><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: monospace; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> </span></span></div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-34594559394237798282011-09-30T20:40:00.006-04:002011-10-23T00:47:01.646-04:00The poet as content provider<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Poetry and the Web go together remarkably well. It's a good fit, for several reasons. The average length of a modern American poem is just about one screenload of text. Then, there's the money. A Hollywood producer who sinks $100 million into a film can't afford to give it away on the Web. But since it costs next to nothing to write a poem, publishing it to be viewed for free on the Web is not such a big change from previous methods of disseminating poems. Poets have pretty much always given it away.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">But the thing that impresses me most, and this is going to sound perverse, is the relative permanence of Web publishing over print publishing. How can I say that, when everyone else is bemoaning the evanescent nature of pixels compared to good old corporeal paper and ink? </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">I've published some poems in printed "little" magazines, all of them now out of print. Occasionally a copy will turn up in the catalog of a rare book dealer. But so few copies of literary journals are printed to begin with, and so few kept, that you might as well seal a poem into a bottle and cast it into the ocean.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">On the other hand, nearly every poem I have ever published on the Web is still instantly available, anywhere in the world. The very first was in an early ezine called Blue Moon Review, and here it still is <a href="http://www.thebluemoon.com/4/weinstock.html">www.thebluemoon.com/4/weinstock.html</a> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">A large group of poems came out in 1997 in Riding the Meridian, from web publishing pioneer Jennifer Ley. <a href="http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/weinstock.html">http://www.heelstone.com/meridian/weinstock.html</a>. And it's all still there to be read, and has been read far more times than it ever could have been if immured in the pages of low-circulation little mags. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">The real reason poetry and the Web are a perfect marriage--there aren't many people who care about it, and before the Web it was labor-intensive for them to find each other. In this they resemble enthusiasts of nearly every other small-niche interest. What the Web has done is create truly vibrant and growing communities of people who share the same rare allergies, collecting hobbies, obsessions, and kinks.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">I don't think poetry is just a kink. It's a mother art, a wellspring of all of our literature, lively arts and culture. But now, with the Web, poetry never had it so good.</span><br />
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</span></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-50393110359227414282011-09-29T00:03:00.001-04:002011-10-02T14:35:05.776-04:00The Army Termite Midget Dream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Halfway through my 10th year, for the first time ever, I noticed myself. All at once, I knew that I was me, a person, different from and separate from all the other people. Just as quickly, I knew that I had to grab this sudden feeling and secure it so it could not get away, and to do that I had to put it into words. Fiercely, I said to myself, "I am me and I know I am me. I must remember this moment."<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>Not long after that, I had a dream, a regular sort of night dream, with jump-cuts and shape-shifting and all the nonsensical stuff that happens in dreams. What made this dream different was that I gave it a title, and started trying to sell it on the playground. "I'm selling dreams," I said. "I just had The Army Termite Midget Dream and I'll sell it to you for a dime."</div><div><br />
</div><div>My friends, my two best school friends, made it clear that this was silly and not the least bit entertaining and that nobody was going to pay me to tell them my dreams. Even when I revealed tantalizing details of the dream, like our classmate Bonnie Peterson wearing a suit of armor, nobody was buying it.</div><div><br />
</div><div>What the hell was I doing? I've never understood that incident or known what to call it, until now. Four inches up the screen from where I am typing this sentence, on Blogger's dashboard, is a clickable tab that says MONETIZE. I haven't clicked it yet, but someday, someday I will. And then I'm finally going to sell somebody that dream.</div><div><br />
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</div></div></div></div></div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-41436912662094346812011-09-28T06:33:00.004-04:002011-10-02T14:35:34.121-04:00Poem: The Names We Took<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b></b></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Slow Turtle, Sitting Bull, I envy you no more.</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>These are the names that we took:</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><st1:place><st1:placetype>Garden</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>Trees</st1:placename></st1:place>, Almond Leaf, Shooting Star,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Grapeleaf, Grapevine, Grapeblossom,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>He-Who-Prunes-Vines and He-Who-Sells Wine,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>a <st1:place><st1:placetype>River</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename>Wine</st1:placename></st1:place>, Wine Glass, Goblet, White Cloth,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Grain-Grinder, Bread, the Guest-to-Whom-Wine-Is-Served,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Gift of Wine, A Field of Corn, Shining Corn,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>White Bread, Son of the Earth, Petals of Stone,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Little Flower, Big Mountain, Silver Nail,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Silver Ingot, and Gold, Always Gold,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>A Flood of Gold, A Brook of Gold,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>He-Who-Fishes-for-Gold, A Grove of Gold,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>A Roomful of it, its Shine, its Joy, its Clang,<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>its Grumble.</b></span></div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-32151238083326162892011-09-27T23:57:00.004-04:002011-10-02T14:36:14.664-04:00Hoozajew? How I defeated an online Nazi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Today is Google’s birthday. With as much as I use Google and how totally the search engine and all of its subsidiaries have changed my life, today ought to be my birthday too. And why shouldn’t it? This is <st1:country-region><st1:place>America</st1:place></st1:country-region>. You can have any birthday you want. That’s what my grandfather, Leon Weinstock, believed when he immigrated. He didn’t change his name, but he wanted an all-American birthday, and chose, what else? The Fourth of July.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My name is Weinstock. <i>Let me spell that for you</i>, I say. Spelling out my surname, which I must do constantly, is a minor annoyance. People named, e.g., Ann Jones, have no idea what we go through, unless they impulsively commit hyphenation somewhere along the way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We are foreigners on this earth, no matter where we go, no matter how long we stay. Forget for an instant and your name will remind you. Once, when my father bought a lake house in <st1:place>South Jersey</st1:place>, a neighbor remarked that his name might be too long to fit on the mailbox. Nine letters? Give me a break. He would never have said that to a nine-letter WASP, not even to a ten-letter one. The implication was clear: we simply didn’t belong.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My interest in Jewish names quickly brought me into contact with a brilliant anti-Semite. It started when we traveled to <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state> for a bar mitzvah. In our hotel room I picked up the <st1:city><st1:place>Manhattan</st1:place></st1:city> phone book and started to browse. Immediately what caught my eye was the astonishing variety of Jewish names. There were all the usual ones, Gold this and Silver that, Wein this and Rose that, but also others, unfamiliar but in the same onomastic vein, full of references to shiny metal and jewels, pretty flowers, delicious food and drink. I wrote down all my favorites. After the trip I pulled down my German dictionary, looked up the names, translated them into English, and wrote my poem “The Names We Took.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The subject intrigued me, so with Google as my tireless research assistant, I swarmed the net to learn just how we got such names. To make a long story short, we took them, en masse, in the late 18<sup>th</sup> and early 19<sup>th</sup> centuries, at the behest of European civil authorities who were finding it damned inconvenient to keep track of (and tax and draft and control) people who had no surnames at all, instead using patronymics of the “David Ben Schmuel” variety – “David son of Samuel.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But as my search expanded, I also found a website called Hoozajew.org. On the site was offered, free for downloading, a piece of software called “Hoozajew 2.0” whose stated purpose was “counting Jews.” Just feed in a list of names and back comes the list with all the Jewish names flagged. The site owner had already performed this data analysis on dozens of lists, and had discovered, with alarm, that Jews were taking over the government, the law, the banks, the media, the arts and sciences, and more. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">From my research, I knew that the anonymous site owner probably had not developed the software, but had adopted a program devised for a much different and more benign purpose than uncovering the workings of the worldwide conspiracy. No, it was developed by Jews for fundraising purposes, a quick and efficient way to sort a prospect mailing list for Jewish charities who wanted to target the tribe with appeal letters, rather than wasting postage and printing on unconnected strangers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The site, perhaps a dozen pages in all, was very matter-of-fact, quite understated as anti-Semitic ranting goes, but still hateful enough for me to want to know exactly who was sponsoring it. I searched for days, checking domain name registries and every search engine I knew about, looking for clues. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Lucky for me, the Hoozajew founder had other hobbies than Jew-bashing. He carelessly included a traceable email address on the hate site. The address included the name “dimona.” Dimona is the location of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s secret nuclear facility, the place they developed and build their still-unacknowledged atomic bombs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But the Dimona address also appeared on a site about the physics of the trebuchet, a medieval war engine, a sort of catapult popular among technically minded Ren Faire geeks. On the trebuchet site, he freely gave out his real name and location. He was a scientist, living in central <st1:state><st1:place>New Jersey</st1:place></st1:state>. I found his address, his phone number, the names of his wife and children and brother. I found out that he had once run for the Senate as a Libertarian candidate, and that he occasionally posted consumer book reviews on Amazon. In other words, he wasn’t a solitary kook; he was a man with a job and some standing in his community, and who would have strong reasons to keep his hatred hidden.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So now I knew, but what was I going to do about it? I didn’t really object to his having his site. I didn’t write to his domain host and demand that the site be taken down. What bothered me most was his anonymity. I wanted to expose him, or something. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At that point, my quest slowed down. I just didn’t know what to do next. I dithered. I called <st1:state><st1:place>New Jersey</st1:place></st1:state>’s Anti-Defamation League; they listened but offered no action. I called a newspaper in the man’s town, but they did not seem interested in the story either.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eventually, I realized that I would have to do something myself. I began to email the man, as if I were a sympathizer who wanted to chat, using an email address that did not give away my own identity. We exchanged several rounds of email over a few days; he was cautious, but once he was convinced that I was on his side, his comments grew more virulent. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then I overplayed my hand. I told him I knew exactly who he was, using his name and everything else I had found, and challenging him to come out in the open. At that point, he panicked. He did not write back, but immediately, within a few hours that same day, scrubbed both his sites of any identifying information, and soon after anonymized his domain registration. Hoozajew.org continued for a few months after that, and then eventually disappeared. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Did my emails force him to skedaddle and contribute to shutting down the site? I hope so, and I’m glad I did what I did. I do notice, though, that the site name Hoozajew.org is in use again, this time as a sort of links page on the topic of free speech.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The poem "The Names We Took" can be read in my Sept. 28 post.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-21418291982721120752011-09-26T20:30:00.001-04:002011-10-02T14:36:37.504-04:00Sliver Time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You say you have no time to practice your art, and I bubble over with advice. I say “Choose a different form, one that is better suited to the precious slivers of time you still have. Write haiku or flash fiction. Paint watercolors. Compose etudes instead of symphonies, snapshots instead of studio shots. Make raku pots. If you can’t roast, stir-fry. Maybe art can’t be central, but it can be interstitial.” That’s the kind of thing I say.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am sorry for all that advice, you may ignore it. Actually, you already ignore it. But worse than that, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ignore it. In all these years, I have never been able to settle on an artistic endeavor for myself that fit permanently and productively into my life. And yet, when asked who I really really am, I say “poet.” I say “writer.” I say “artist.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then there is this blog, which I announced four years ago, and about which I blithely used the word “diary.” If this were actually a diary, there would have been nearly 1500 posts by now instead of 40. It hasn’t been daily, it hasn’t even been monthly. My track record on that kind of dailiness, on any kind of dailiness, is poor. I never do the same thing two days in a row, never have done. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still I suspect that it is now time to make art every day, because all I have is every day. So here’s a new idea. I will write here every day, and there will be only one excuse for not blogging, and that will be writing poetry. If I’m here, I hope I will bring you entertaining prose. If I’m missing, there will be a poem in the works. Feel free to ask for the poem, and if I don’t have it, give me a hard time about it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week I started asking friends, colleagues and students to give me poetry assignments, and I’ve already received dozens. I’ve got my work cut out for me. Gotta go work. I'll see you tomorrow. Or better yet, I won't.</span></div></div>David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-61788011788015428672009-10-13T11:05:00.036-04:002009-10-16T17:58:01.071-04:00Top 40<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgleiMk7MUmnLpolFGf5ctoSD28Gi8gUEoLdo8nwz_YK9IJyLT-v0dgxP2jgIb3Pu17ghad8jzYk3pp8t3B7U21sKU32RPiDXK9YyVnI7St4BeTLXL0p2PyC_VkZqLfReMzk8cSXFrR1YlZ/s1600-h/HeinrichHertz01.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 172px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgleiMk7MUmnLpolFGf5ctoSD28Gi8gUEoLdo8nwz_YK9IJyLT-v0dgxP2jgIb3Pu17ghad8jzYk3pp8t3B7U21sKU32RPiDXK9YyVnI7St4BeTLXL0p2PyC_VkZqLfReMzk8cSXFrR1YlZ/s200/HeinrichHertz01.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392961263854520098" border="0" /></a>My first real job was at a top-40 AM radio station in Rockville, Maryland, WINX.
WINX ("winks") had been my favorite music station since I moved to Maryland at 13. I was a card-carrying member of their fan club, the WINX Winkers, so I was thrilled to join their staff. Working for a radio station gave me considerable cachet among my high school peers. It was ever so much more glamorous than the Math Team. Adding to my status was the fact that I had grown a beard. This photo is not me, but radio pioneer Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894). In his day, all men had beards; but in mine a beard was a daring fashion statement (my first and last) which made me a pioneer too.
It was the summer of '68, and WINX needed a vacation replacement for their transmitter engineer. I was only 16, and didn't even have a driver's license yet, but I did have a First Class Radiotelephone Operator's license from the FCC.
My duties were few but federally mandated. Broadcasting was heavily regulated almost since its beginnings, chiefly to keep stations from interfering with each other's signals. Radio waves travel especially far at night, skipping off the dark ionosphere for hundred or thousands of miles. To prevent this, local stations on shared channels like WINX were required to either sign off after dark or transmit with low power in a restricted local pattern.
I would arrive at sundown, unlock the transmitter shack, turn on the lights, and throttle back the station's 1,000-watt transmitter to half power. Then I pushed a big black Bakelite button, activating a heavy relay. Kerchunk! The relay re-routed the station's signal from a single omnidirectional daytime tower to a three-tower directional array.
Then I would take the logbook clipboard and walk into the summer twilight to visit all three towers where I jotted down the current reading from an ammeter at the base of each tower.
After touring the antenna field, I went back to the shack and read a book or phoned my friends. It was essentially an easy babysitting job but paid better. My only chore for the rest of the night was to check every half-hour that the transmitter hadn't strayed from its assigned power level or frequency. Frequency was allowed to vary only 10 cycles per second in either direction from 1600 kilocycles. They aren't called cycles and kilocycles anymore. Hertz and kilohertz had been the official units since the 1930s, but nobody used them much, and I still don't like them, because cycles per second are easier to imagine than hertzes. Isn't it hard enough to understand invisible things? Words that make the invisible visible are to be valued. That is why there is poetry.
My shift ended at midnight when the combo man arrived. Combo meant a disk jockey who also had a First Phone ticket and was a qualified transmitter-sitter. Jay drove up in a red Mustang convertible and talked endlessly about drag racing even after my complete disinterest became clear. He ran his six-hour show from the tiny, shabby spare studio in the transmitter shack rather than the big studio in downtown Rockville. I always stayed up all night to watch Jay do his show, because I couldn't drive myself home.
A station profile in Billboard says "Jay salutes all who must work at night, such as police, fire departments, hospital staff, and military personnel." I don't remember him saluting anybody. What he did was cue up records, station jingles and commercials, and introduce songs to within an inch of their lives.
Top-40 stations today advertise "Less Talk!" but back then, deejays never shut up. They honored a strict taboo against the briefest interval of silence. Even three seconds of silence was considered "dead air," and dead air was unforgivable. It meant you were asleep on the job, or had lingered too long in the bathroom, or worst of all, had nothing to say. Jay ran a tight show. He would even talk during a song's instrumental introduction, up until the very split-second when the singing began.
Back then, even the lowliest local deejay was a celebrity. Starstruck girls called Jay all night long to flirt. They generally claimed to be 16, although most eventually confessed to being barely 13. Jay, who was 21 and engaged to be married, had been in the business long enough to lose any interest in Winker jailbait, so he would pass the phone over to me.
I don't know how I stayed up all night, but I was young and stupid. At 6:00 am, Jay would switch back to full daytime power, lock up, and give me a ride in the Mustang to downtown Rockville where I could catch a bus for home.
***
(My thanks to Alan Hochberg for suggesting this topic by asking whether our generation had any such thing as a musical canon. The answer is yes, and its name is Top 40.)David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-56840148385764042162008-10-02T21:12:00.006-04:002008-10-02T22:07:30.712-04:00Say the word fat<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7nzQkp0kKTkQgd2lUyIcJBGrJxP-9Mmu0CNtt_gz-iGjaN2y6pyoRR60eKdV-pW9IZibFGLmuay6gNdS1EpyFPM41jTztrHqY2O8rGafZH58r5X7cwv6rNo6AmfHyibHwe_m2V0Fm3Aj/s1600-h/fatbook2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7nzQkp0kKTkQgd2lUyIcJBGrJxP-9Mmu0CNtt_gz-iGjaN2y6pyoRR60eKdV-pW9IZibFGLmuay6gNdS1EpyFPM41jTztrHqY2O8rGafZH58r5X7cwv6rNo6AmfHyibHwe_m2V0Fm3Aj/s200/fatbook2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252730504259539170" border="0" /></a>I'm in a weight-loss program again, six months long. They gave me a charming little pedometer with their logo, plus a copy of this valuable reference work by "the Calorie King."
I had made up my mind to use my hour-long bus ride to Burlington every morning to do my food journaling for the program, recording everything I eat and looking up each item's calories and fat gram content. But the first time I fished the book out of my bag to start, I put it right back in. The dominant graphic element of the cover is the word FAT in 144-point letters, yellow on a field of blue. It's bad enough that my co-commuters already look at me and think "FAT!" No point encouraging them.
Our assignment for next week, beside learning to keep our journals, is to find the highest calorie food item in the entire book. As far as I've read, the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake is winning, at over 2,000 calories <span style="font-style: italic;">per slice</span>.
Tonight I searched my bookshelves to find a suitable cover-up for the offending book cover. After reviewing many volumes which were willing to sacrifice their covers to the cause, I chose Dante's <span style="font-style: italic;">Purgatorio</span>, in the John Ciardi translation. For the sin of gluttony, six months in purgatory should be just about long enough, don't you think?David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-19855945693895329372008-10-01T09:09:00.003-04:002008-10-02T09:40:08.253-04:00Passing Peak Lemon<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI9G178gijZxFYGzLuUrfWQJvAbRcRGZnnMs-JVKEf3G0d4WDa6L7bgS3K-KeC-5etVwvw-RcYK1Es5Lq5w2cy3CXYdsqE8DKReckgkvVk3rnZgyHYl6UhIzBhsOGM6o12smJgiEBJbE7x/s1600-h/lemons.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI9G178gijZxFYGzLuUrfWQJvAbRcRGZnnMs-JVKEf3G0d4WDa6L7bgS3K-KeC-5etVwvw-RcYK1Es5Lq5w2cy3CXYdsqE8DKReckgkvVk3rnZgyHYl6UhIzBhsOGM6o12smJgiEBJbE7x/s200/lemons.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252172360842920210" border="0" /></a>These things sneak up on you, like global warming and the credit crunch. On Saturday, the shelf-stocker at Greg's Meat Market told me he hadn't been able to order bottled lemon juice for a month, and that the other stores in town didn't have any either.
This sounded fishy to me, so I investigated. There's definitely something going on. Shaw's did not have either Realemon or their house brand in the big green bottles, only a tiny plastic jug. I bought two. Hannaford's did have regular-size bottles, but a brand I hadn't seen before--"Lemon Time." I bought two of those too.
And why am I hoarding lemon juice? Why am I acting like a Baghdad taxi driver who can't find an open gasoline station? It's because recently lemonade has become a big item at our house, both the cold and hot varieties: bottled juice, water, and Splenda. I'm sort of an improvisatory cook, using whatever's around, so my shopping isn't systematic either. The problem with lemon juice is that there's no substitute for it--hence the panic.
Googling around revealed that there is indeed a worldwide shortage of the sour stuff, caused by weather and crop failures. I won't trouble you with the details. I'm just here to remind you that food comes from farms, not grocery stores. If you see a a farmer today, give him a nice cold lemonade.David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-3778061586515300612008-04-16T16:51:00.001-04:002008-04-16T21:29:35.726-04:00Food is messy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMP_3Qdsk9U1ttCwyJtUJagYu_7qzkA0siGpHDFMcrbrw7Hn9YJzVe8_5JxZOAqUGjIk_BnjBbOcte-N99F__Q1G1xqWdPkjH_9SVI6KP-ffa6ivx1DM_ZRMGpiOT0-rssHo-5t47TWOjr/s1600-h/FoodMess.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 217px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMP_3Qdsk9U1ttCwyJtUJagYu_7qzkA0siGpHDFMcrbrw7Hn9YJzVe8_5JxZOAqUGjIk_BnjBbOcte-N99F__Q1G1xqWdPkjH_9SVI6KP-ffa6ivx1DM_ZRMGpiOT0-rssHo-5t47TWOjr/s200/FoodMess.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5189950113843658722" border="0" /></a>Even if you are a neat, precise cook (and I am not), even if you wipe up spills when they happen and clean as you go (and I don't), cooking generates prodigious amounts of messiness, and eating is not far behind.<br /><br />Food is inherently, intrinsically, essentially messy. Why do you think they call it a mess hall? The kitchen is a factory that would not pass an OSHA inspection. Bread flour flies through the air. Non-stick spray (hi, Pam!) drifts like a toxic chemical cloud. Thick tomato lava spatters the stove with fiery globs. Peanut butter clings to the knife so tenaciously that even boiling dishwasher water cannot loosen its grip.<br /><br />My Kitchen of Shame is notorious, but I am putting up a good fight lately to conquer food mess and my inherent distractability. The trick, I have finally learned, is to treat the cleaning task as finite and strictly ordered, from left to right. Left to right is an arbitrary approach. I rebel against all that is arbitrary, but most order is arbitrary, and without order there is only disorder, and disorder is mess. QED. Now I clean the counters from left to right and in an hour I can get the place looking respectable.<br /><br />I know that this entry is not profound. Sometimes I have to stop being profound and just clean the kitchen. It is humbling. I need some of that.David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-67971968970790712562008-04-16T16:40:00.000-04:002008-04-16T16:50:08.355-04:00The perils of brand extension<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlm2ETvL9TxY1JeLPOqy07H_hK27LyPbf__poC2cxx4zCBq3rEk6EgIb6uWKfNHN60UzCNQTNDn7DPW5b7psRF4odzbTaPBwzqIZ2eIW6GB5aLaVm73Ga-tahcEPIoNz3iF1s_bIwLDF6a/s1600-h/pumpkin.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 254px; height: 338px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlm2ETvL9TxY1JeLPOqy07H_hK27LyPbf__poC2cxx4zCBq3rEk6EgIb6uWKfNHN60UzCNQTNDn7DPW5b7psRF4odzbTaPBwzqIZ2eIW6GB5aLaVm73Ga-tahcEPIoNz3iF1s_bIwLDF6a/s200/pumpkin.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5189946050804596690" border="0" /></a>You can see the corner the One-Pie company has painted itself into. Their canned pumpkin puree was such a hit, the public demanded more. But how could the One-Pie company sell a two-pie can? Imagine the angst in the creative department. Finally, somebody came up with that yellow circle with a message. In the biz we call it a splash.<br /><br />The splash says "NEW! 2 PIE SIZE."<br /><br />I had to show you. I saved the can to use for a pencil holder and I carry it around with me everywhere I go.David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-65876688534624620542008-04-16T16:01:00.001-04:002012-03-07T07:49:58.580-05:00I am the eggman<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVVp6Ed1BGuC2RqOJjQsaMV4hyphenhyphen5OZPdmTaLhny1M5TiEa2yLRZHJjdYvVHqbuBrlFy4wNiogZADIxglHaieDlFmKrSGHYOTejrb-Ss82KE9x9vadLqfqfnSypG03xVfZRd1Qda87xvW1u_/s1600-h/eggs.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5189936163789881234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVVp6Ed1BGuC2RqOJjQsaMV4hyphenhyphen5OZPdmTaLhny1M5TiEa2yLRZHJjdYvVHqbuBrlFy4wNiogZADIxglHaieDlFmKrSGHYOTejrb-Ss82KE9x9vadLqfqfnSypG03xVfZRd1Qda87xvW1u_/s200/eggs.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;" /></a>I grew up surrounded by egg farms and thought this was perfectly normal. You may be surprised, but I thought it unremarkable that all the egg farmers I knew were Jewish. Why shouldn't they be? Nearly everyone we knew in our South Jersey town was a Jewish egg farmer, or had been before they got into something else. My grandfather had a poultry farm, my father and his three partners ran a chicken feed mill, our next-door neighbors the Gingolds had a poultry farm, and so did the Auerbachs, the Eisens, the Fleischers, the Kaufmans, the Mullers and Maiers and Ritters and Wolfs.<br />
<br />
For a few decades, from the 1920s through the mid-60s, this odd enclave of Jewish poultry farmers flourished in and around Vineland. At its peak in the 1940s, there were thousands of Jews on the sandy flats, far from the slums of the Lower East Side or the suburbs of Westchester County. The earliest settlements were encouraged by a German-Jewish philanthropist, the Baron Maurice de Hirsch, who thought that the solution to "the Jewish question" was for them (i.e. us) to go back to the land. He planted Jewish agricultural colonies in Turkey, Argentina and New Jersey. One of the first was in Alliance, NJ, still the site of the Jewish cemetery where my father and his parents lie buried.<br />
<br />
All the other Jewish kids I met in college and later life grew up in suburbs, or in cities. Nobody knew from farming.<br />
<br />
And what odd farming it was! This was not the 4-H life, no storybook menagerie with a quack-quack here and a moo-moo there. It was monoculture: white chickens laying white eggs. There were no tractors, no fields, no growing of animal feed from the soil. Feed was purchased from local mills like my father's, which ground into powder the carloads of grain that came by rail from the Midwest. There were no cows or horses, and certainly no pigs. We did not witness the constant cycle of livestock breeding, birthing and slaughtering which was supposed to teach regular farm children the facts of life. At our farms, day-old fuzzy yellow chicks arrived in cardboard boxes from the hatchery, already peeping, roughly spherical, and ready, within a few months, to start laying eggs. At the time, a hardworking grain-fed chicken was expected to produce about 200 eggs per year.<br />
<br />
The hatchery chicks were guaranteed to be nearly 100% female. Rooster chicks, who obviously were never going to lay eggs, were culled at the hatchery by sharp-eyed sexers and thrown into barrels to die. Chicken sexers in that era were always Japanese, a prime example of America's ethnic division of labor, which is always shifting and reshuffling but never entirely disappears. Yesterday we had Jewish lawyers and comedians, Italian singers and organ-grinders, Negro boxers and railroad porters. Today we have Pakistani emergency room doctors, Vietnamese pedicurists, Oaxacan roofers and African-American secretaries of state. But I digress.<br />
<br />
It is often said that Americans nowadays, spoiled by supermarkets and plastic packaging, don't even know where food comes from. All sentences containing the word "nowadays" are propaganda on their face and can be safely ignored. And I <span style="font-style: italic;">do </span>know where eggs come from. A few times I accompanied my father, who was his mill's outside man, on his rounds of the poultry farms. The farmers were always glad to see him, because he was funny, and respectful, and spoke a little Yiddish, and knew all about agriculture. They would bring out the limp carcasses of dead birds for him to autopsy. He cut them open with a hunting knife, looking for signs of disease in the flock that could be remedied by adjustments in the feed, or by antibiotics. During one of these field post-mortems he cried out in triumph and lifted something up to show me. It was the dead hen's oviduct, with an already-formed egg visible inside it, patiently waiting to be laid, still unaware of the catastrophe that had overtaken it.<br />
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The egg business was shrinking by the 1960s. Like nearly everyone we knew, my father began to make other plans, and in 1965 we moved away from Vineland. More on that in another post.David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4190870869581201894.post-21606823305051839132007-10-23T17:16:00.000-04:002007-10-23T20:27:24.384-04:00My Own Private Ramadan<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRtRocvG0OFAHtXPHhwGNAak8zic5vZ-fjO_4RDKCNO_P-oKhb0BHt3d4FTfwLq1rTZqCwdh8Tfguy1mQM54T6d04YdszpeSrJ3AuXzUo4QtY-8SETiOYhnmV8Dp6aYgz6RjEr4lUauYo/s1600-h/ramadansoup.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRtRocvG0OFAHtXPHhwGNAak8zic5vZ-fjO_4RDKCNO_P-oKhb0BHt3d4FTfwLq1rTZqCwdh8Tfguy1mQM54T6d04YdszpeSrJ3AuXzUo4QtY-8SETiOYhnmV8Dp6aYgz6RjEr4lUauYo/s200/ramadansoup.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124645507286131506" border="0" /></a>This fall, as happens every 32 years when our two different lunar calendars intersect, the Jewish High Holy Days coincided with the Islamic month of Ramadan.<br /><br />Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is an absolute 24-hour fast. Before sundown the night before Yom Kippur, one eats the Meal of Cessation, called Seudat Mafkeset. From then on, it's NPO, nothing by mouth. You don't even brush your teeth, lest a drop of water be swallowed.<br /><br />Finally, after sundown the next day, the fast is broken with a traditional meal that varies by culture. The Sephardic custom is egg-lemon soup, <span style="font-style: italic;">avgolemono</span>. We Ashkenazim go for a dairy meal--bagels, cream cheese, smoked fish, cheese blintzes. (A traditional Yom Kippur greeting is "May you have an easy fast!" My own family of origin took that to its limits, enjoying the fast-breaking feast without ever enduring the fast itself.)<br /><br />Ramadan is very different, an entire month alternating diurnally between fasting and feasting. Fasting during the daylight hours is still a considerable feat and sacrifice, especially when Ramadan, which migrates through the solar year, falls in the longest days of summer. The faithful stoke up with Suhur, the morning meal, before dawn, and cannot refuel again until Iftar, the festive evening meal. (Harira, above left, is an Iftar tradition in Morocco, lamb stew with lentils and chickpeas.)<br /><br />What does all this have to do with me? I have never kept the Yom Kippur fast, and wouldn't even notice when Ramadan came around if we weren't at war in two Muslim countries. By next week, maybe three.<br /><br />But lately, on many days each week, I seem to be simply putting off eating until late in the day. In short, I am finally doing what my blog title says, <span style="font-style: italic;">Waiting For Hungry</span>. No breakfast except coffee, no lunch, no snacks. Finally, in mid-afternoon, I allow myself a meal.<br /><br />It's my own private Ramadan.David Weinstockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14828791668002997996noreply@blogger.com2