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 Millennium) 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 Christmas 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 through 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!

Marley Was Dead, To Begin With

A Christmas Carol

A few years ago, I was at the semi-annual booksale at the Portland Public Library and I found this copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The book was in ok shape (it has been repaired with scotch tape)and I don't think I would have bought it if I hadn't opened the cover and found the history of annual readings. The former owner of the book was Alice E. Thornton and, oddly enough, I have bought other books that have belonged to her at book sales and in shops in town. The card she used as a book mark indicates that it was a gift to her from Marian Heseltine. I tried a Google search on Alice, but didn't find anything . . . not much of a surprise. Seeing these dates, year after year, mostly, just sets in motion reflections on my part. Why the breaks, of course? I wonder when she started reading this to her children, if she ever did? The clear writing throughout the 30's giving way to the shaking writing of the 80's? (There is one more date - December 30, 1930 - on the back flyleaf.) This list of dates is another tangible reminder of year upon year rolling forward. To read a book is to absorb the author's place and time and ideas. Do books themselves absorb the environment around them over the years, listening from their place on our shelves? I wonder how old she was when she received the book? Did she always read it by electric light? Where was it moved to over the years? Or did it stay in house until it was packed up and donated to the Library? It does not appear to ever have been part of the circulation. I started adding my own readings in 1995 and have read it six times so far.

The story kind of grows on you, I must admit. I haven't read much Dickens, but there is a breezy kind of writing style and use of colloquial speech that makes you think. When Scrooge first sees Marley's face in his doorknocker, Dickens says it "had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar". (I thought I read somewhere that a lobster was a name for a furnace, but I can't seem to find my source now.) The story is well known, of course, although I must admit that my introduction was to the Mr. Magoo version.

There have been many other versions,including a Growing Pains version (author comments forthcoming?)

The cold described seems so bitter cold, even by Maine standards. A couple of years ago, I read a book that described what has been called the Little Ice Age, a period of colder than usual weather in the northern hemisphere from the 1650's thru 1850. It included the Year with No Summer (1816). So when Dickens wrote the book (1843), he no doubt would have considered the weather as it was. Even as later as the 1790's, ice fairs were held on the frozen Thames - something that does not happen now.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you,
and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations--
such is a pleasure beyond compare.
~ Yosida Kenko ~

Things That Piss Me Off
Ok, I know that motion picture production companies feel compelled to create those little video signatures at the beginning of movies so we know who made the movie. (and how come it take four or five production companies?) but how come after I have sat through three or four of those little video brands, do I have to see the SAME company names roll by on the credits??

No Promise Except Integrity

Birthday Events
So Dawn and I had a good old fashion date in the city for my birthday. We started off with dinner at the Roma Cafe. I think I had been there years ago with some Catholic Charities folk at Christmas time. Good meal and wine but we ate in the dining room downstairs and it was , really, like eating in someones home dining room. There were maybe ten or twelve other people, tops, and you just felt as if you had to talk in a whisper. What did we talk about? I probably bitched about work, didn't I? how uninspiring. Dawn was, as usual, elegant and beautiful in that calm, unadorned way of hers. Uxorious . . . look it up.

Afterward, we went to see Juanito Pascual at One Longfellow Square , at Dawn's suggestion. Why would she make such an unusual musical choice, you might ask? Well, go to the website. I don't think she was disappointed. You know, I used to have a long, thick mane of hair too . . . Actually, I had had a craving for flamenco over the last few weeks for some reason and it was a perfect night. His playing is superb . . . just perfect! It hearkened back to my brief visit to Spain in '75 as a High School Senior. Pascual played his own compositions, which were traditional in structure, I guess, but sounded very modern to me. The rest of the quartet was great, especially La Conja, in spite of her cold. She sang a bit and danced a mesmerizing flamenco, especially from maybe twelve feet away. How does she beat out a different beat with each foot?

The funny part was the two couples sitting in front of us. About our age, give or take: typical Cumberland Foreside/ Whole Foods/Beaners-but-we-don't-hunt types. You know know who I mean. Well, first they get into trouble because they insisted on setting their drinks on the stage in front of them. (Apparently beer on a stage is against the law in Maine.) Then, when La Conja got up to dance, one of the guys had his feet up on the stage! (the stage area is maybe 10' by 14' - if that, pretty intimate, in other words.) The coupe de grace was when she began to dance. Ever watch a flamenco dancer dance and clap out their rhythm? It is a beat that is beyond you or me. So our friend in front of us began to clap along, you know, to encourage her. Well, she gave him the stink eye and a curt nod pretty quick - while never missing one of a thousand beats a minute, it seemed- and he stopped. Okay, this isn't a Freeport hootenanny and barn raising, dude! (What would we do if we didn't have people to make fun of?)

A great evening of live music, good food and the company of a remarkable woman (in spite of her not being able to dance flamenco.)

Grampie Letter

As a follow on to my birthday, here is a letter my Grandfather wrote me and I have kept:

Nov 30, 67

Dear Mark
I wish I knew how to write a good letter to a ten year old boy, you are learning a lot of things that were unheard of when I was a boy We hope you will be able to take advantage of them. Everything has changed so much since I was a boy, but we did have the opportunity to help change a lot of things and I expect you will too, and I know they will for the most part be better for everyone. My advice to a ten year old in the years ahead to balance, play, work and love in your daily life and one will be happy and prosperous . . . Say hello to Mom and Dad, Kay and Gig - and a happy birthday to you.
Grampie and Gramie

My middle name is Orin and I am named after my maternal grandfather. We all have family talismans and one of ours is about the letter my grandfather wrote me when I was ten and he was 73. Born in Aroostook, he had migrated to Seattle before the First World War. he enlisted there and served in the 110th Infantry Division as a corporal. After the War, he stayed in the West until 1930 when he returned and started a seed potato farm in Westfield. He Served two terms in the the Maine State Legislature, beginning in 1950. I may have more to say on our family later. Mom gave me an album of photos that I'll be scanning and getting up over the next few weeks.

Back to the letter . . . .'For the most part'? I wonder what he meant by that? Of course those years were very different - we were bogged down in a hopeless military quagmire, threat of nuclear annihilation from a rogue country and worried that the environment would not sustain another generation . . . . no wait that would be . . . like . . . now. Then again, for someone who had fought in the Great War and farmed his way out of the Depression, the 60's must have been frightening indeed. Not so much for me (more 'Wonder Years' and less Woodstock). Could he or I even imagine what the next forty years would bring? I don't think so. In some ways, it must have been comforting for him to know that whatever shit was coming down the pike wasn't going to be his problem.

I often think about that myself. I know that Commercial Street and the State Pier will all be under water in a hundred years, of that I have no doubt, but that won't really be MY problem, will it? I am not saying that global warming isn't important and I realize that climate change and America's Imperium are important issues for me as well as my children, but there is some consolation in thinking, "I did my bit and it is time for the next generation to take up the banner." I just wonder if that bit of equivocation on his part might reflect a belief that he had carried the family fortunes forward to this point and was ready to set the burden down.

A piece of family ephemera I keep in the fireproof box is this card from his second term campaign in the Maine State Legislature. ( Breanne, in case you ever wondered where your eyebrows came from). Holy cow! Who proofread this? For years I thought this read 'No Promise Except Integrity' . . . I took that as a watchword - I would have sworn that was what the card said.

But now, it is as if I have read this for the first time, as I type 'No Promises Excepting Intergrity'. Well, maybe he was ahead of his time . . . this reads like a Russian translation of a Google upload of Japanese Anime. Hmmm.

Be that as it may, he served with honor as a citizen soldier and legislator and bought a new Buick when the potato harvest was good. And did, in his own small way, change his world forever.

Poem on my Birthday

For at least twenty years of so, on my birthday, I have read Dylan Thomas's "Poem On His Birthday". When I turned 40, I was troubled to realize that I had outlived him. As poet, I always hoped to 'be a writer' and it was the driving force in my early life from my teens through college. Even the choice of the ministry early on in college was, in part, the thought of a career that would support a writer. Only later did I come to realize that you either write or you don't. I was never much concerned with being published; I just craved the freedom to consider and express ideas. Well, more on that someday I suppose. But at a certain age, you begin to look at what your heroes had accomplished by your age and reflect on your own success's (or failures). I am beginning to think about the same thing with respect to sailing (how many years do I have left that I could physically handle a boat? Ten? Fifteen?). Part of the impetus for this blog is to address the question, where the hell did all the years go?

Ok, Ok, let's just get to the poem. Thomas is an uncracked cypher to me. Some poems you can read in a single sitting and just get (that would certainly be anything I have ever written, I suspect) and others you read and read and puzzle about. I read somewhere that they found 60 or 70 pages of notes for his last poem on which he had written perhaps twenty lines, something like that anyway. (I know the Literature Majors are already howling in the depths of their philistine-populated Hell, sorry) Dylan Thomas cries out, in my mind, to be read out loud and to be read drunk or stoned (I have done both on previous birthdays). So each year, sitting alone in my sun-filled living room, surrounded by my books; a glass or red wine or scotch; maybe a pipe of some heady leaf (legal or illegal), I would roar out this poem to " whatever gods may be" . This was (and is) my exultant word-drunk ritual at birthday time; and like any ritual, not fully comprehended . . . pointing outside itself . . . cracking the heavens and pulling us beyond.

This is the end of the poem . . . go read the rest, preferably on your birthday. No pipe today, but a good glass of Famous Grouse and a clear, icy cold afternoon before the first snowstorm of the winter. And thoughts of my friend who celebrated his birthday yesterday in Paris.

Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue,
Count my blessing aloud:
Four elements and five
Senses, and man a spirit in love
Tangling through this spun slime
To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come
And the lost, moonshine domes,
And the sea that hides his secret selves
Deep in its black, base bones,
Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh,
And this last blessing most,

That the closer I move
To death, one man through his sundered hulks,
The louder the sun blooms
And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults;
And every wave of the way
And gale I tackle, the whole world then,
With more triumphant faith
Than ever was since the world was said,
Spins its morning of praise,

I hear the bouncing hills
Grow larked and greener at berry brown
Fall and dew larks sing
Taller this thunderclap spring, and how
More spanned with angles ride
The mansouled fiery island! Oh,
Holier then their eyes,
And my shining men no more alone
As I sail out to die.

An Introduction and Explanation

 Laika was sent into orbit on November 4th, 1957 in Sputnik 2. She was, by all accounts, a likeable mutt plucked from the streets of Moscow to become the first living creature to go into orbit. It was a one-way trip designed to coincide with the founding of the Soviet Union and to follow up the USSR's trumping of the USA's space program a month before with the flight of Sputnik 1. The original plan was for Laika to circle the earth for up to 10 days before she was quietly put to sleep by poisoned food or lack of oxygen. I understand that the Russian archives have recently revealed however she lasted only about four hours before succumbing to heat or stress or both.

I was born less than a month after her flight and seems fitting that I take her as my mascot and guiding star. I wonder what Laika dreamed of as she circled the globe those hours? The Space Age . . . The Cold War . . . the Atomic Age. History is categorized into ages, epochs, great tides of time and space, but History is experienced as personal. The entire space age devolves into a single dog nervously circling the globe, perhaps dreaming of cold nights in an alley or the kindness of her handlers. Who knows? My own life hinges on certain events and experiences that are like pricks on a map, the swinging of the compass legs from point to point along some trajectory to a port as yet undetermined.

My purpose in creating this blog is to give me a place to create a history of those points and a record of my current journey. It is partially a remembrance, partially a desire to find like minded individuals who may have had similar experiences, interests or thoughts to share. I won't pretend to live an especially exciting or deep life, but I think I will bring an interesting perspective. If you are reading this (which sounds like a galactic message in a bottle itself), I hope you will return from time to time. I hope to share items of interest to us both.

By the way - cool music video about Laika at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTlGmb7Ze40

Don't you love the age we live in?