Home is Sweet

Here's  a not-too-profound thought: the sweetest place on Earth is home, wherever that happens to be. Susan and I returned home to Oklahoma day before yesterday from a great trip to New York City. The most vivid memories of that trip are going to be of the astonishing array of people we encountered. I must have heard 25 languages. At least. And for me, a southern-born and bred guy, the utter strangeness of the sight of tall buildings, sidewalks, and pavement for as far as the eye can see in any direction. Nothing you read can possibly prepare you for the reality of one of the world's great cities--I imagine Calcutta, Hong Kong, Beijing would all be equally overwhelming to the first-time visitor.

But nothing beats just being home. Because everything is familiar, because you're back to your important "stuff" that you had to leave behind, because you're again with friends and family, because you're back where you belong. There's great comfort in belonging somewhere, having a place you can call home . . . which makes my heart go out to the many, many people who actually can't say they belong anywhere: refugees, displaced persons, Palestinians.

I come home an overstuffed mailbox, both real mail and email. It was easy to cull out the trash from the former; the latter I'm having to trudge through more carefully, and in a certain order. Family first, which is how I received the link to a two-part column by Stanley Fish in the New York Times* which addresses one of favorite rant topics: the weight given to student evaluations of university professors. And, perhaps worse, the defense of the practice by people who should know better. (I can't live with the notion that people who have reached the age of reason can actually defend the practice in good conscience.) I've been over this before. I think the practice of determining the quality of a university professor's teaching much less his or her suitability for tenure on the basis of what some empty-headed kid thinks about it is beyond absurd. But we are all the victims of the market now, so education has to debase itself to the level of popularity contest and road show. What's good and worthwhile is what sells. That's it. We're at the portals of hell, people.

I close the way Fish did. What can I say but a resounding "AMEN"?

I cannot leave the topic without remarking on the passion voiced by many who took the time to respond. A Teacher lets it all hang out and speaks for many: “Sorry kids, you are not the authority in the classroom. Me Teacher. You student. Me Teach , you learn. End of discussion . . . Education is not a business. You are not my customer. My classroom is not Burger King. You do not get to ‘have it your way.’”

And, finally, I am pleased and amazed to report that one poster actually answered what was thought to be the impossible question: What exactly is good teaching? PES realized years after encountering it that he (or she) had been its beneficiary: “I had learned without knowing it almost, how to see three sides of a twosided story.”

*Link is to the second column, the link for the first part is in the opening paragraph.

The Second Coming

This is one of the greatest poems in the English language, in my opinion. Is this not now? Who can read this and not be sent into reveries of thought about our own time?  And to marvel at the wonderful insight of this poet?

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?                     Grecian icon "The Second Coming" c. 1700

Milwaukee County Stadium, August 10, 1990

I actually have the score book. I watched the game on TV and scored as it went. I do this often. This is a game that the Rangers won 11-3 over the Milwaukee Brewers. It also happened to be Nolan Ryan's 300th career win. Here's the box score. And here's the poem this score book page inspired.

Milwaukee County Stadium, July 31, 1990

It’s gone now, that stadium,

like so many others, pulled down, plowed

under.

Naught but a memory,

like all these players here

in my scorebook, the famous,

obscure, and solid,

guys gone long since

into a world beyond baseball,

where it’s deathly quiet all the time.

This page plays no favorites.

Hall of Famers like Yount and the relentless Ryan.

Plus Baines, Petralli, Gatner. Gamers all,

suspended forever in scorebook scribbles

like a high pop fly

seemingly painted on a canvass sky.

Yet here arrayed in pencil and pen,

neat as a baseline in the top of the first,

blood quickens youthful muscles:

players run and hit, clean their cleats,

spit in the dust on deck.

Bats crack, balls slam into mitts,

crowds roar at impossible feats.

Here these boys light up the page

with reds and greens—hits and walks—

like pinball caroms off walls

binging into the right center crannies,

hitter churning to third,

standing up,

clapping his gloved hands

in triumphant glee,

a little puff of dust swirling

some moments

on an infield breeze.

Who in World is Going There?

Millions of people, to answer the question. Have you ever wondered which blogs would appear on a list of the 20 most popular blogs? Well, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it, but when I did stumble across this list, I was pretty surprised that I did not know the vast majority of these places. Apparently a lot of people do know and are going there in the millions. I had never heard of most of these websites. Apparently, about 25 percent of the blogs are about celebrities, one of the most crushingly boring topics in the universe. There appears to be a one or two for wireheads, and one for car people. Rather than list all 20 of these blogs, I thought I would just list the ones that I had at least heard of. Of these, I only frequent Huffington and Boing Boing with any regularity. Here ya go:

• Huffington Post
• Boing Boing
• Icanhascheezburger
• Gizmodo

The Crime in the Gulf

This is what the surf looks like in Gulf Shores, Alabama. I've been there many times back in my college days in Mobile. Pictures like this just make me sick.

If there is such thing as sin, this is certainly it.

Way Cool

Something my daughter shared with me, which my son shared with her. I have such cool kids!



Lichtfaktor is the name of a group of graffiti artists based in Cologne, Germany. Only these graffiti artists don’t work with spray paints: they use flashlights, neon tubes, glowsticks, LEDs and other mobile sources of light to create dazzling shapes and brilliant swirls, that illuminate dreary cities with their momentary glow. Then, using a special camera with a long exposure, the group captures these light ‘sketches’ to preserve them for future appreciation. The group, comprising of graffiti artists Tim Feshke and David Lupschen, and video engineer Marcel Panne, also make videos of their art, using stop-motion animation to make their light graffiti come alive. In one particular video, entitled ‘Star Wars vs. Star Trek’, Tim and David made trash cans come alive, staged a fantastic light saber fight, and ‘teleported’ themselves through the gloomy streets of Germany. For more of their bright art, go here.

Grizzly Bear

The song is called "Two Weeks." The video is kinda weird, but I think you'll find little to criticize with the mellow music. I like it.

Update I: (My son just emailed to say he liked the song. Which is great. But I meant to use this video for one of the days I would be gone. Now I'm going to have to find something else or jiggle with the posting date of this one. I'll take the course of least resistance and jiggle the date. This is what I get for being so anal.)

I'm Just Having a Blast Today

. . . thinking about Susan and my trip to New York City tomorrow. Although well into my 60s, and not a person who's been a stay-in-one-place guy, I have never been to NYC. I'm finding that rather incredible now as I'm spending hours scoping out everything there is to see and do on Manhattan Island--let alone the boroughs, which we won't even see, except for a ball game at Citi Field. (Cannot go to a major league town without seeing a major league game. It's just not done.) I don't think time will allow for us to go to the Botanic Garden in Brooklyn--that's a next time visit--what with all the other things to see. Museums especially: the MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim. Eating, of course, and just soaking in a magnificent city. I can tell already from all the poking around about New York that I've done on the Web today, that I'm just going to love this place. We're leaving tomorrow, and we'll be back next Monday. I've scheduled blog entries for the next several days, but I don't think I'll have all the days covered. I might miss a couple, if I don't find something engaging to put up there between now and shutting down time.

Update I: Driven idiot that I am, I did find enough to cover all the missing days. See ya for real when I'm back next Monday.

It Had to Happen

"I’m not necessarily a conspiracy person, but I don’t think enough investigation has been done on this. Someone needs to be digging into that situation. Personally, and this is purely speculative on my part and not based on any fact, but personally I feel there is a possibility that there was some sort of collusion."

You know, just as surely as you can predict oh, say the sun rising in the East, you just knew there was going to be some dingbat Republican who would come out with a story like this: Barrack Obama and BP colluded to allow the oil leak to happen in the Gulf of Mexico. The purveyor of this imbecilic view is one Bill Randall, candidate in the Republican primary for a congressional seat in North Carolina. Of course, he doesn't know just why the Obama administration would want to do this, but it might be to further the passage of green and environmental legislation in Congress. And this would not be too far from the cracked brain views of such luminaries as Sarah Palin, who thinks that radical environmentalists are behind the spill. See, if radical environmentalists protest oil drilling everywhere else, then deep water drilling becomes necessary. See? Their fault.

My guess is that Republicans running for office all over the country now are going to kissing the butts of the Tea Party nuts now that a Libertarian has won the nomination for the Republican party Senate race, and a Tea Party nut case has won it in Nevada. Nothing is too crazy for these people to believe. The story is here. Mr Randall backtracked quickly, claiming he didn't say what he plainly said, which is standard practice now for politicians of all stripes.

The Amber Waves of Hemp

The neat thing about having friends with wide-ranging interests, a propensity to read about things, and intellectual curiosity is that they can be counted on to send you stuff they find interesting every once in a while on the not-too-off-the-wall assumption that if it interested them, it will probably interest you. Thus was I introduced to this website, which you drill down to from the home page: the website of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, Inc. It's full all kinds of facts about this versatile plant. Which, of course, since it is of same family as marijuana, is illegal in the U.S., being considered by the mammoth intellects that decide such policies in this country to be as dangerous as heroin and crack cocaine.

So in case it's been a while since you read up on hemp, let me share just a few of pertinent facts about it with you about it. There are a lot more on the referenced web site. I've just pulled out some interesting ones and mixed them all up. Read the rest and then you tell me that our ridiculous policy of making the cultivation of this crop a crime makes any kind of sense at all. Further, you have to wonder when you read this kind of thing, why somebody with some balls in Congress or the Executive doesn't point out how utterly stupid this country is for letting its terror of recreational drugs effectively damn useful, profitable, and ecologically sound products to the nether regions where they can do no one any good. The amber waves of hemp is not something you can be expecting to see any time soon, unless there's some kind of miracle.

*Hemp has been grown for at least the last 12,000 years for fiber (textiles and paper) and food. It has been effectively prohibited in the United States since the 1950s.

*Hemp can displace cotton which is usually grown with massive amounts of chemicals harmful to people and the environment. 50% of all the world's pesticides are sprayed on cotton.

*Industrial hemp and marijuana are both classified by taxonomists as Cannabis sativa, a species with hundreds of varieties. C. sativa is a member of the mulberry family. Industrial hemp is bred to maximize fiber, seed and/or oil, while marijuana varieties seek to maximize THC (delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana).

*Industrial hemp has a THC content of between 0.05 and 1%. Marijuana has a THC content of 3% to 20%. To receive a standard psychoactive dose would require a person to power-smoke 10-12 hemp cigarettes over an extremely short period of time. The large volume and high temperature of vapor, gas and smoke would be almost impossible for a person to withstand.

*The US Drug Enforcement Agency classifies all C. sativa varieties as "marijuana." While it is theoretically possible to get permission from the government to grow hemp, DEA would require that the field be secured by fence, razor wire, dogs, guards, and lights, making it cost-prohibitive. [Insanity]

*George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper.

*Over 30 industrialized democracies do distinguish hemp from marijuana. International treaties regarding marijuana make an exception for industrial hemp.

*Hemp can displace wood fiber and save forests for watershed, wildlife habitat, recreation and oxygen production, carbon sequestration (reduces global warming), and other values.

*Because of its importance for sails (the word "canvass" is rooted in "cannabis") and rope for ships, hemp was a required crop in the American colonies.

*While the original "gruel" was made of hemp seed meal, hemp oil and seed can be made into tasty and nutritional products.

*The products that can be made from hemp number over 25,000.

*Hemp grows well in a variety of climates and soil types. It is naturally resistant to most pests, precluding the need for pesticides. It grows tightly spaced, out-competing any weeds, so herbicides are not necessary. It also leaves a weed-free field for a following crop.

*At a volume level of 81%, hemp oil is the richest known source of polyunsaturated essential fatty acids (the "good" fats). It's quite high in some essential amino acids, including gamma linoleic acid (GLA), a very rare nutrient also found in mother's milk. 

*Hemp was grown commerically (with increasing governmental interference) in the U.S. until the 1950s. It was doomed by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which placed an extremely hight tax on marijuana and made it effectively impossible to grow industrial hemp. While Congress expressly expected the continued production of industrial hemp, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics lumped industrial hemp with marijuana, as its successor the US Drug Enforcement Administration, does to this day. 

*Canada now again allows the growing of hemp. [Canada is looking better and better all the time.] 

*Hemp fibers are longer, stronger, more absorbent and more mildew-resistant than cotton. 

*Hemp can be made into a variety of fabrics, including linen quality. 

*Hemp can yield 3-8 dry tons of fiber per acre. This is four times what the average forest can yield.