Clay Lies Still, but Blood's a Rover

I haven't memorized much poetry, for all my love of it.  My brother-in-law has memorized huge gobs of Shakespeare (or had, I'll have to ask Jim how much he still remembers). But I can't seems to make them stick, as much as I try.  When I was in school, our class had to recite Invictus by William Ernest Henley ("Out of the night that covers me. . . . "), The only thing worse was twenty of us, each giving the poem our own halting translation,   but I have remembered it, for all these years.  The second bit of poetry I found as a Freshman at the University of Maine written on a desk in an auditoreum.  I had no idea who wrote it or where it came from.  For years I assumed that it was a verse from a rock song which I was, naturally, ignorant of.  (Funny sidebar, when I came to school, I wrote my name on each record in my collection of mostly Gregorian chants and movie soundtracks, just in case anybody wanted to borrow them.  Oh Lord, what a simpleton!)

So it was with great joy that years afterwards I was reading a copy of the Collected Poems of A. E. Housman and realized that at last I had found the source of my quote.  I don't know how many times I had drug myself out of bed with the last stanza of this poem in my ear.  There is good anglo-saxon alliteration in the rest of the poem, I realize now.  The same marching of syllables that makes Beowulf such a joy (in good translation anyway).  Well, here is the poem, whole cloth.  I don't think I will ever remember the rest of the poem, or forget the end.

REVEILLE

by A.E. Housman

Wake: the silver dusk returning

Up the beach of darkness brims,

And the ship of sunrise burning

Strands upon the easter rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,

Trampled to the floor it spanned,

And the tent of night in tatters

Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:

Hear the drums of morning play;

Hark, the empty highways crying

'Who'll beyond the hills away?'

Towns and countries woo together,

Forelands beacon, belfries call;

Never lad that trod the leather

Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber

Sunlit pallets never thrive;

Morns abed and daylight slumber

Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;

Breath's a ware that will not keep.

Up, lad: when the journey's over

There'll be time enough to sleep.

Ice Storm and Gettin' In Wood

The ice storm this past week took down part of one of the trees in my front yard. I heard the 'limb' (it was 18" in diameter), fall and went out to find the limb across the road. It brushed the telephone and power lines across the street, but didn't take them down. It did send a whiplash that pulled services from several houses across the street. About 200,000 Mainer's lost their power for part or all of Friday (ours was back by the end of the day). My parents lost power until Saturday night and as of tonight, there are still folks without power.

This afternoon, I went over to the Farm to help my Dad get up wood from the woodlot. He sold wood to a person in return for stove-length cut wood left in the lot. We still needed to split the wood and get it under cover. I worked there for the afternoon and we got up about a half a cord, split and stacked and probably another cord, unsplit. I thought I might find a good Robert Frost poem this week about chopping wood or something. But as I was looking through my copy of Come In and Other Poems, I found a poem I had written to a friend of mine in 1978. The title refers to the Fryburg Fair and the closing in of the season after October. I tried in that image of the smooth turn of a hawk's head to capture the inevitable turning of the seasons. The images of the farm are for the most part autobiographical. - real or imagined. At the time, I was pretty certain that I was going to live on a farm, learn to play the fiddle and smoke good dope with my friends for the rest of my days. I blame John Denver. But actually, people were flocking back to the land in Maine in the 1970's and it really wasn't so far fetched a future. Seems like another century . . . oh wait?! Well, maybe it would not be a bad idea to get a decent Jotul in the house after all?

AFTER THE FAIR

For David

The closure of a hawk's eye
Compass the stone field, dead leaf
Trampled path of cattle, woodchuck, cat.
All within the twisting fence road
Curl into the barnyard, closing
Like the last rose before the frost.
The herd deserts the lower pasture
For the barnyard feed bunk, jostling for
Summer's grass corpse of measured
Nourishment.

Hard wood, potato, beef in the freezer;
Short days, lamp light, laughter;
Cold curses, chores, wool and woodsmoke.

In the ice-flowered morning, the fox
Cannot hear the empty chicken coop,
Nor mice the sleeping bees.
Quicker than sunrise, the hawk's
Studied glance comes round

And it is Winter.

Is There, For Honest Poverty

Is there for honest poverty,
Wha hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by;
We dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, -
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin gray, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, -
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that and a' that,
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stare, and a' that, -
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star and a' that;
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.

A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might, -
Guid faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities, and a' that;
The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks that a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may, -
As come it will for a' that, -
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that, -
When man to man, the warld o'er,
shall brothers be for a' that!
Robert Burns

The video below is pretty good. Just wait for the music.


This song is a personal anthem of mine (Andy Stewart's version is the best, but this one is not bad). I like the spirit of the thing. To know how Burns struggled all his life and how wonderful his songs are is kind of sad. But then, I guess it adds to the power of them to know from whence they came - the man and the land. I can certainly sympathize with Burns as I listened to the wind howl around my crumbling chimney and thought about how my home is falling around my head. "Three o'clock thoughts", I call them , when the world seems bleakest and the litany of problems seems as long as the sea.

"We dare be poor for all that . . . our toils obscure and all that . . . the man is the gold for all that."

I guess many of us are feeling 'honest poverty' and setting ourselves above those bastards in their private jets and silk shirts coming to pretend to beg for money from those they own. Let's hope they get all they deserve.

At Grass

I started this blog one year ago and I am afraid I haven't done a very good job of keeping it up. In my defense, I would note that I work on computers all day and sometimes it is hard to face the screen again at night. Lately, too, my attention has been on Facebook and following friends and family there. Well, so be it. Here is a new start at least. Isn't that what birthdays are, an assessment and a prediction? I wanted to find a poem to post and I like this one very much. I have never been much of a horse racing fan, but certainly can sympathize with the subjects. I remember thinking that I could do anything, be anything, when I was young. I was certain that fortune waited just around the corner. Well, I have wandered in that maze for some time now and I haven't turned that particular corner.

At Grass, by Phillip Larkin

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
--The other seeming to look on --
And stands anonymous again.

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances sufficed
to fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes --

Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass: then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowds and cries --
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies;
Only the groom, and the groom's boy,
With bridles in the evening come.

The Philosopher's Stone

I am reminded of the story of a boy walking along the road (don't they always start that way?) and encountering an old man weeping by the side of the road. The Boy stops to inquire why the man is so inconsolable and he notices that in spite of the pitiless rags the Old Man is wearing and his general look of poverty that his belt buckle is of purest gold. The Old Man tells his story, "I was once a great thinker and alchemist. I have sought my entire life for the Philosopher's Stone, that magic stone that will turn anything it touches into gold. I sought high and low, from Kings and Sages and Wizards of all kinds. Surely the Stone must exist! Every pebble and rock I touched to my buckle, in hopes of finding the Stone and so securing my fortune. I have wandered the Earth for years in search of the Philosopher's Stone."
The Boy cocks his head and scowls, "But Sir, surely you have found the Stone, since your buckle is of purest gold! Why do you weep so?"
And the Old Man answers, "Yes, my buckle is purest gold. But for years I tested hundreds, nay, thousands of stones. Every one was a failure. Over the years, I acquired the habit of picking up stones and touching them to my belt, one after another, and knowing they were not the Philosopher's Stone, I eventually ceased even looking at my buckle to confirm another failure."
"So you see", the Old Man goes on, " I kept on my quest until one day I chanced to look down and see my golden buckle. Then I realized I had found the Philosopher's Stone . . . yes, found the Stone. . . and had cast it away." With this the Old Man rises stiffly and hobbles down the road, picking up pebbles, one by one.

Countdown to Monday

Coming fast and furious now . . . this is one of my favorite Disney movies, remixed with a classic song. I already miss you, Sweetie

No Aliens Today

Ok , Ok so no giant alien spaceship appeared over the horizon to show us all how puny and insignificant humankind is. (Or did it and by a mass conspiracy on the part of all media in the World we weren't told???) At least I found a great video that shows us what they would have seen. Check it out. Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy Music Video.

Always On My Mind

Just a short post today . . . Jean Luc Picard always referred to his second in command as "Number One". Is that a nautical term, I wonder? In any event, I refer to my number one daughter as my Number One as well. Not because she is my second in command (although sometimes we do need to remind her who is the parent int he family), but because she is my oldest and most like me in temperament. Unlike Dawn, who is my opposite and therefore an endless mystery to me, Emica is like me and a mirror in whichI see my own strengths and flaws.

Today, I was driving to work and this song came up on my MP3 player. As soon as I heard it, I thought of Emica. So here is my little love letter to my 'number one' whom I am so proud of, ready to spread her wings. go have a listen . . . Always on My Mind

Summer Vacation

Well, this week got off to a fairly good start. I went into Portland on Saturday and walked around the Old Port. Took some nice pictures of the schooners around the State Pier and later walked down to where the Amistad was docked. Below is the Wendameen coming into dock. Originally, I had planned to go out on her or the Bagheera one evening this week with Dawn.

However, disaster struck on Monday night when my Mom fell and broke her hip. First to the emergency room in Skowhegan, then to Mercy Hospital in Portland and finally arrive by week's end at New England Rehabilitation Center. The rest of the week was spent cleaning up seemingly years of accumulated grim off the farmhouse. to make matters worse (if possible), this week has been the longest stretch of rain-free weather the entire Summer. My recurring thought (while tedding hay on the last day of my vacation) was the only thing that could have made this vacation more miserable would have been to actually have been working. So here is my little pity party for a week I'll never get back. boo hoo!

What I Have Been Watching

Firefly Series

I had watched the series on Hulu.com, but seeing it again from the beginning is just heartbreaking. There was so much potential in the series; so many ways the show could have gone. I watched Episodes 1 & 2, the original pilot and plan to ration it out over the next few weeks. Then I'll top it off with Serenity and start all over again.

Halo

The first and still the best in my mind. Maybe because I have played it enough for each scene to be familiar, but it was like being with an old friend. I should really write more about how playing Halo changed my life - truly. But suffice to say that I have had few experiences, religious or secular, that have matched playing that game. I got a chance to play "In the Maw" for an hour or so and Breanne and I played a 'co-op' game that degenerated into killing each other over and over again after we had cleared Episode 2 - "Halo" on easy.

Afrita Hanem

Sort of an Egyptian Bollywood, this movie tells the story of a genie, a nightclub singer and his (imagined) girlfriend and her father. Made in 1951, it features, frankly, a pretty sexy genie; cool clothes and cars; the ubiquitous goofy sidekick and lots of singing and dancing, albeit the former in arabic. It was amazing to me watching it to think that this came from a Moslem culture. I don't know as much as I would like about how Egyptian cultural history, especially under Nassar (would he have been in power at this time?), might have lead to this very secular production. There is a spiritual or moral aspect to the story, certainly, and a prophet-like character who provides the moral compass for the film. But it also includes singing and dancing (both traditional and modern) and drinking and parties. Part of the charm of watching foreign films is all the actors and actresses you do not recognize. What defined beauty in 1950's Egypt? What defined a hero? Anyway, if you like Bollywood films, that means you already tolerate subtitles and songs in languages you can't understand and people breaking into song and dance seemly without provocation, you would enjoy this movie. The only drawback to Afrita Hanem is that it is in black and white - but maybe that is a good thing . . . leave you to imagine what those costumes and sets would have looked like in color.

In the Cut

Interesting film. I guess we can thank Jane Champion's work with direction, camera focus etc. from letting this slide into another slasher movie. And Meg Ryan's performance is very powerful. Cudo's to all the cast, actually, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kevin Bacon provide facinating characters as well. You have a feeling that there are lot's of stories there that we just don't have time for in this movie. The whole movie is very erotic, yes, but with such an underlying sense of danger throughout. It is the old 'gun on the wall' adage, but you just know when she goes to live with her half sister over the strip club, (more) bad things are bound to happen. It is also a grungy, side of New York that ain't no "Happily Ever After". I was frankly, surprised at the ending, which to me, means Champion did a better job than I gave her credit for for setting me and the other characters up. Good movie, but not for the faint of heart.

Mud Season

In the course a week, two feet of snow have left our front yard and we are in Mud Season. I am glad to see the Winter go, of course, but this week until the trees and lawn green up are miserable. At the Mall, the mountains of snow are slowly receding like glaciers, revealing their terminal moraine of lost shopping carts and trash. I half expect to see a car emerge from the dirty snow, MIA since December. Yet, even before this week, there were the first songbirds out in the morning when I left for work. Thankfully, the light is up at 7:00 AM and still light when I come home at 7 PM. I was in Atlanta week before last and one thing I noticed was how late in the morning the Sun rose. It does stay up later the evening, though.
Potholes
Spring in Maine would not be complete without our potholes and frost heaves. There doesn't seem to be more than a half-mile of any road in Maine that isn't seamed with frost heave cracks and car-sized divots. In Portland, they say the potholes are so deep that you can see down to the original cobblestone. Here is a recent post on the local news.
http://www.wcsh6.com/video/news/player.aspx?sid=83251&aid=34171
How do you make a pothole?
Most roadways are built in layers, starting with compacted earth and gravel for drainage. Some older city streets may even have a subsurface of bricks or cobblestone. All of these layers are covered with asphalt, which is a gooey blend of tar, oil byproducts, curatives and aggregate gravel. In an ideal setting, this layer of asphalt repels rainfall and snow, forcing it into drains or the shoulder of the road.
Potholes form because asphalt road surfaces eventually crack under the heat of the day and the constant stresses of traffic. These cracks allow snow and rainwater to seep into the underlying dirt and gravel. During cold winter nights, this water freezes and expands. Some of the dirt and gravel is pushed out as a result, leaving a hole when the water eventually melts. Drivers continue to drive over these unseen holes, putting even more stress on the thin asphalt layer covering them.
Eventually, the asphalt layer over these divots collapses, creating the traffic hazards we call potholes. Potholes can cause significant damage to a car's suspension system or tires if the driver fails to avoid them. Potholes can also fill with water, obscuring any other hazards they may contain.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

from Two Tramps in Mud Time by Robert Frost

more about the poem

Support Our Troops - 57th Overlanders Brigade

My Current Bumpersticker

A couple of years ago Breanne's boyfriend introduced her and through her, me, to Halo. I don't think it was an exaggeration to say that that was a life changing event for me. I haven't played a lot of games since (although Halflife 2 is probably my second favorite), but playing Halo was something that was for a time an obsession for me. I dreamt about it, I bought the music, I collected images. I still go back and play H1 from time to time (although my Dad has my copy at the moment) and I can shut my eyes and visualize almost every step. I liked H2, but not as much. I am currently playing H3 and to be honest I find it frustrating. Not because of the gameplay, per se (I am about 2/3rds of the way through) but just because of the way it is designed, I seem to run out of ammunition all the time and the game just seems to be 'running around'-I don't have a sense of purpose that I felt in Halo 1. The graphics are better on the one hand, but they are really designed for big screen HD TV's. Halo 3 doesn't have the intimate feel that Halo 1 has. Halo as an immersive entertainment and part of my psyche is deeply rooted. However, it has been some time since I felt an interest in something like it, but now I have a new obsession and that is the subject of this post.

Did you get the reference in the title? Does the reference to Browncoats Overlanders Brigade mean anything to you? if not, I would like to share my latest obsession, the TV mini-series (that's what it was) "Firefly"and the movie "Serenity".

Conversion Story
I had heard about Firefly in one of my podcasts, The Daily Breakfast , over a year ago. Fr. Roderick does a segment on Movies and Television and he is a hardcore SciFi fan. He had mentioned watching the series on DVD and he liked it very much. He had mentioned that there was even a cleric like himself in the series, which he liked. I didn't think too much about it at the the time, just squirreled the item away. Flash forward to January of this year. I had recently signed up to the beta site for Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/) and was trolling around the site. If you are not familiar with Hulu, the sites has movies and television series available for on-demand watching via the Internet. The movie selection doesn't approach the on-demand available from NetFlix, but the TV section is pretty good. Some interesting series from our past (re-runs of Remington Steele anyone), and one of the series available was the 14 episodes of Firefly.

The Firefly series originally aired on Fox in the Fall of 2002. Although it eventually won an Emmy, the series was botched by Fox from the very beginning (the pilot episode was not aired until December 20). The series didn't catch and was canceled, although a movie sequel ("Serenity") was release in 2005. Over the last few weeks I have managed to see all the episodes but one, in the order they were meant to be seen in, as well as watching "Serenity" via NetFlix. Oh, I should mentioned that "Firefly" was created by Joss Weadon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel fame. I haven't bought the DVDs yet, but I am now subscribed to The Signal , a fan podcast and just subscribed to a story podcast. there are a couple of Darkhorse comics I want to get that rounds out stories of the Firefly 'verse.

So What Makes It Work

Firefly is a Sci-fi/Western about a group of smugglers flying a firefly class transport vessel called Serenity from planet to planet, avoiding the authorities and performing petty crimes. There is a strong Robin Hood/Jesse James gang feel to their activities, robbing the rich powerful Alliance to benefit the poorer planets they visit. Not only do they have to avoid the powerful Alliance forces, out 'in the black' are roaming bands of cannibalistic savages - the Reavers. (not to be confused with border Rievers) . Finally ship's captain, Malcolm Reynolds and second-in-command Zoe Washburne are both former 'Browncoats' - veterans of the losing faction when the Alliance fought to unify the galaxy under their control.

The technology is clearly Sci-Fi and the special effects won the 2003 Emmy for Best Special Effects in a Series. It is clearly a long way from the lovable colored light set design techniques of the Original Star Trek. However, the story line is so clearly indebted to the Western genre. The Serenity crew are, in one episode, literally cowboys. "Frontier justice", itinerant preachers, hookers with hearts of gold, wandering Confederate-turned-outlaws, mysterious and terrifying 'savages' - they are all there. The Firefly 'verse is morally ambivalent. More than anything else, I am reminded of the great Western movies of the 40s and 50s, especially "The Searchers".

Malcolm channels John Wayne quite a bit, really. Laconic, impulsive, with his own sense of right and wrong, Mal and his crew are not above the level of violence in the world they live in. Mal and Zoe are perfectly willing to shoot first and ask questions later. Even Shepard Book, who acts as the moral compass for the crew, rides with the group on occasion and shows himself no stranger to non-lethal violence. he is like the town preacher in the movies who rides along with the posse. In the Firefly 'verse, there is no Prime Directive. And the villains are less noble than the Romulans or Klingons ever thought to be.
The frustrating part about the history of Firefly is that if it had been given a chance, the show could have rivaled any of the long running ensemble series. There were so many stories that were left untold. And although I loved the movie, Serenity, there were doors closed (no spoilers) that made it typical for TV series going to the big screen - what can we do to make this bigger, more global in scope, more life altering for the cast than a television episode? There could be a sequel to the Movie (let's hope!), but it won't be the same as having a dozen seasons of weekly episodes in the can. In part, of course, I blame Fox network for not getting behind this show. there have been any number of great, innovative shows on Fox that have died after a few seasons (think Millenium) for every quirky show that managed to survive (think X-files).

So my favorite character? - Kaylee Frye, the ships engineer. She is a sweet, sexy brainiac who is the soul of the ship. Flower Power with a Wrench.

On the Hard

Dawn asked me the other day what I meant by 'On the Hard' and I thought I would take a post to explain. It is a term I first heard on the Furled Sails podcast. Each week, Christie and Noel talk to and about the 'sailing lifestyle'. That is, builders as well as cruisers . . . . weekenders and well as live aboards. . . . Ship captains and boat sailors. They always end their podcast ' see ya on the water'. One of their guests referred to his time on land as the opposite of on the water - on the hard. So here I am.

It's not like I came from a long line of watermen. Certainly most of the men in my family have been pretty earthbound - farmers and cattlemen. My uncle was in the Navy, but he returned to Aroostook and has never left. In Maine there are several dichotomies. There is the Maine south of the "FBI " in Freeport and the 'real' Maine. There is 'The County', which is the northern third or so of the state, Aroostook County. And there is also a strong dichotomy between Maine as a maritime state and as a wooded, mountained farmland - the last frontier before the West. There was a huge argument about the Maine State Quarter because it was set on the coast and didn't (to some minds) sufficiently emphasize the lumbering and agricultural heritage of the State. )

I come from a long line of farmers, the last time a Boutilier spent a significant amount of time on a ship it was on their way from France to Nova Scotia. We are a family of homestead and the 'Prairie Farm' (My great grandfather's farm, confiscated during WWI to serve as a listen post on Germany.) Even now, I refer to my own boyhood home just as The Farm (as in, "I'm going over to The Farm to help Dad get the chains on the 520.") although it has a name and a heritage. When my father and mother finally leave the land, it will no doubt be "the Boutilier Farm" or Maple Lea Farm (its registered name), just as my parents live on the Duncan Farm, and to some always will.

I remember as a kid going with my Grandfather over to "The Homestead" where he grew up to check on his garden. We would hike across overgrown fields and light forest back to his garden. We would eat sun-warmed cucumbers off the vine before returning to the house where I would shyly stand around the kitchen with the slate sink and the handpump while he talked with his bachelor brothers. On my paternal Grandmother's side, there was the dairy farm with its milk rooms and attics filled with trunks and old equipment and World War I uniforms hung from the rafters. And of course, My maternal Grandfather's farm in Westfield. The smell of grease and chickens and the cold, baleful mountains of potatoes in the potato house where I would climb to the tops of the bins and watch the people sort and bag far below me. So here is my Grandfather in March of 1960, out on the land. What were his thoughts then? Or was he just appreciating the beginning warmth of Spring after five months, the smell of the mud and the promise of a better harvest? I wonder if he felt he owned the land or the other way around?

My introduction to a body of water was Mattawamkeag Lake, fishing with my grandfather Boutilier and something just clicked. Maybe it was riding up in the bow in the dark, coming back from the Lower Lake, crouched down trying to stay warm as the hull thrummed with the sound of water rushing by, a quarter of an inch away? Or the smell of the lake permeating the air or the lap of the waves against the shale beach rocks at night?

But I feel the same way about the sea as well; the swell and movement, the smell, the power of the water. The glorious indescribable blue of the Stroudwater cove in the hard, bright light of winter?

As much the water, I am attracted by the economy of a boat. Everything in its place. Nothing kept that is not useful or required. Simplicity and complexity. I have been lucky enough to have spent a few glorious afternoons on friends boats and relive the moments over and over. What can compare to the heel of a boat in San Francisco Bay? Or the beauty of Long Island sound? Or making way under Portland Head? So here I am, on the hard . . . . for now.

Andy's 80th

Saturday night we got together to celebrate my father-in-law's 80th birthday in Madison. There were about 20 of us, including all my brother and sister-in-laws and some of their children; Pat and Andy's friends, relatives and siblings. Of all of us, only Dawn seemed prepared to say anything, although Will Carey's rememberances of their life in Baltimore and Uncle Erik's first meeting Andy in the Navy were pretty memorable. Anyway, on the drive home, naturally, I composed what I wish I had thought to say then. Here it is . . . to a great guy.

Ten Thing's I Have Learned from My Father-In-Law

1. Trust your daughter's judgement even when she brings home an apparent idiot. . . the relationship might just last a few years and they can usually be trained.
2. Don't ever eat those red chile peppers in Chinese food unless you are willing to let others see you cry.
3. Your job is to keep a roof over thier heads and meat on the table, even if you can't always be there to enjoy the meal with them.
4. If it is raining, drop them off at the curb and go park the car.
5. It is possible to hit a hole-in-one.
6. When you discover your soulmate, or realize she was right beside you all along, do what ever it takes to not to screw it up. Remember your father-in-law (see #1 above).
7. If the opportunity to pinch your wife's ass presents itself, take it. . . they say 'stop it' but they don't really mean it.
8. When you dance - lead
9. The most important news in the New York Post is on the back page, not on the front.
10. No matter how much you think you have messed things up raising your children, you still raise kids who love, honor and respect you and cherish being with you. I am proud to include myself , by marriage, among yours.

Happy Birthday, Andy!

Old Christmas

I want to start by apologizing to both my blog readers for being so long since my last blog. I had fully intended to do one over Chrsitmas or even New Years, but time and tide . . . . Anyway, here we are on Twelth Night and the end of the Christmas season. We had beautiful snow over the Holidays, but we are in our January thaw and everything is mud and dirty snow. Dawn took down the tree while I was out running errands and everything is pretty much put away. Once, years ago, we actually kept our Christmas tree up until Valentine's Day, no joke. I didn't get to lie under it this year and look up throught the branches (expect when I was watering it), but it was a pretty good tree, I think. I did get through A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve, so one more annotation was added.



Today, January 6th, is Twelfth Night, the feast to commemorate the arrival of the Magi to the birthplace of Jesus. Naturally, it has pagan overtones as well. A King and Queen of Revels is chosen, based on finding a bean or a pea, respectively, in the Christmas Cake. Later coins were substituted. There was a ritual in which , in one variant or another, a wassail bowl or cider was taken out and pour on , or drunk around, the apple trees to make them fertile.

Here's one of my favorite descriptions from OBSERVATIONS ON POPULAR ANTIQUITIES chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies and superstitions BY JOHN BRAND with the additions of Sir Henry Ellis", London, Chatto & Windus, 1913

The Gentleman's Magazine of 1791 records that "In the Southhams of Devonshire, on the Eve of the Epiphany, the farmer attended by his workmen goes to the orchard with a large pitcher of cyder, and there, encircling one of the best bearing trees, they drink the following toast three several times -

'Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou may'st bud, and
whence thou may'st blow!
And whence thou may'st bear apples anow!
Hats full ! caps full!
Bushel-bushel-sacks full,
And my pockets full too!
Huzza!'

This done, they return to the house, the doors of which they are sure to find bolted by the females, who, be the weather what it may, are inexorable to all entreaties to open them til some one has guessed at what is on the spit, which is generally some nice little thing, difficult to be hit on, and is the reward of him who first names it. The doors are then thrown open, and the lucky clodpole receives the titbit as his recompense. some are so superstitious as to believe that if they neglect this custom the trees will bear no apples that year."

A great site for further information and images of the Feast of the Epiphany is http://www.fisheaters.com/epiphanyeve.html .

Apples . . locked doors . . . 'titbits' on a spit? I think we have a pretty good idea what the subtext is here. I can just imagine the men - roaring drunk passing around the (hard) cyder. . . . so drunk they can't remember what was cooking on the fire when they went outside? Well, that's my image anyway.

Now we settle in for the stretch through January and February, but even now the days are a bit longer and the Sun is a bit higher and the memory of Spring is already upon us again.

Things That Piss Me Off This Week

Ron Paul supporters. One of my podcasts, Adam Curry at the Daily Source Code (http://www.curry.com/) is big now on Ron Paul now and he is a media darling in some circles. OK, look, I can understand the appeal of Libertarianism. God knows, I certainly curse the authorities whenever I can, as anyone who has ever driven with me knows. I think any intrusion into our personal lives by the government is unwarranted and unnecessary. I resent surrendering my identity to the State so that I can drive on the highways only until some uninsured motorist slams into my family and leaves my children scarred - which of course they did. THEN, by God, the sooner the police get there, the better. Sure I resent paying taxes, but only because there are hungry children that come to school in our town who are not being helped through government programs I pay for, instead of subsidizing tobacco farmers. And the list of necessary trade-offs in a modern society goes on and on.

I get the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but what Paul and other Libertarians miss, I think, is the incredibly powerful and insidious powers that operate in our land completely outside of the Government - Multi-national corporations; private armies; hidden and open organizations that control our political and economic lives. None of this is addressed by our Founding documents and certainly cannot be addressed by individual States. We are no longer the agrarian / mercantile society of the 18th century. I think Paul and his supporters are-at best, naive with regard to and - at worst, collaborators with - those self-same powers. Who will stand up to those powerful interests for us? Paul and his supporters ignore our political history since the adoption of the Constitution and harken back to an in illud temporis that does not (and perhaps did not ever, as these things go) exist.

But should the State's rights be supreme? I was listening to Tom Wheeler on CSPAN (oops, one of those intrusive government programs) yesterday and he was talking about his book, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails about the use of coded telegram technology during the Civil War. http://www.mrlincolnstmails.com/ He was asked about Confederate use of telegrams.

You see, we have a modern model for Ron Paul's ideals - the Confederate States of America - and Wheeler said in the CSA there were essentially only two main telegraph lines running North/South and East West. The North and West were crisscrossed with a spiderweb of telegraph lines. During the course of the War, the North added 15,000 additional miles of NEW telegraph lines, while the South added 500 miles. Part of that was available resources and technology, no doubt. But it was also an unwillingness of the States to allow a federal government to build an infrastructure across State lines.

That's the problem . . . can you imagine if each State governed Internet use, Aircraft overflight, Food and Drug safety on a state by state basis? That's Paul's world view. None of those items are mentioned in the Constitution, so are they the within the proper purview of the government? Some would argue no. Here endith the raving.

Next time, I want to talk about some movies I have seen recently, especially Pan's Labyrinth, so this will constitute a 'spoiler alert', dear reader, if you haven't seen the movie.

I am off to steam my Christmas pudding and have it with some Brandy Butter and have a final bit of Wassail. Til next time. Oh . . and a belated Happy Birthday, Scribbler!