Two days ago I was sitting on the concrete base of a light pole in the mall parking lot smoking a cigarette.

The parking space by the pole was empty.

As I sat there enjoying a few moments of quiet. a large, black, suburban assault vehicle pulled into the space, screeching to a halt just inches short of where I sat. The doors popped open and a 30-something couple emerged. They both started immediately coughing and retching and waving their hands in front of their faces while glaring with shock and horror at the small tube of tobacco in my hand.

I've seen their type before and just ignored them, knowing that if I didn't engage, they'd go find something else to be critical of.

They did. rolling their windows down a bit ... which I found unusual considering the offense they had taken at my gall to have a habit of which they did not approve, they slammed the doors and went off to buy something more.

I watched them leave and was returning to my reverie when my eye was caught by some motion in the mini-monster truck. A sharp nose and bright eyes peered from between the seats, disappeared, then a standard poodle leaped over the seat backs and into the front passenger seat.

It looked at me, and I thought I detected a sense of commiseration. We nodded at each other companionably. Then the poodle opened its mouth and, tongue lolling out briefly, seemed to laugh.

As I watched, it moved to the driver's seat ... and squatted.

I field-stripped the last of the cigarette, put the filter in my pocket, and strolled past the open driver's window. A quick glance inside confirmed my suspicions.

Suddenly the poodle's head pushed out of the opening. I patted it for a moment and went in to get back to work.

The Rake's Progress

The leaves are just beginning to turn and the needle fall for the white pine has covered the ground beneath it with a soft brown carpet. That means it is time for my yearly contemplation of modern man's failure to comprehend the simplest of things.

Yearly, in this case, does not mean that it is an annual event; it means rather that it starts a new year long musing session.

By the end of October, my suburban neighbors will be hard at work ensuring that the, to them, ugly brown detritus of the trees is raked up neatly and bagged. The bags will be stacked at the curb for the town to pick up and haul to the dump. Every year I ponder this folly before, browbeaten by my wife, I succumb and do the same.

But it always bothers me.

It's not that I mind the work. It's that I don't understand why it should be done other than as a sop to the others who live on our street.

My reasoning is simple. Nature is full of elegant design. Sometimes that design is quirky, but nonetheless it has a meaning of its own. I could talk about Darwin, or D'arcy Thompson's wonderful book "On Growth and Form" or any of the several volumes by Stephen Jay Gould such as "The Flamingo's Smile" or "The Panda's Thumb", but I will not. Instead, I will just talk about the design in my own yard.

I look at the maple tree next my my driveway. Its leaves have not yet turned but they will. As the days get shorter, the chloropyll will gradually leach out of the leaves, taking the green color with it. Red will start to become the predominant color. (The leaf is not actually changing color, the red has been there since it emerged in spring. In fact, the reason the tree is called a "red maple" is because when the leaves first appear and before the chlorophyll starts working they are red.) Their hold on the twigs, so firm throughout the Spring and Summer becomes tenuous and they start to fall off.

But why do they fall? Why do deciduous trees drop their leaves for the cold season? Wouldn't it conserve energy for the tree to retain the leaves and re-activate them in the spring?

Well certainly one reason is to reduce the weight of the potential snowfall on their branches. Unlike the more flexible evergreens, maples are hardwood. Their branches are more brittle. They also grow more slowly than their softwood brethren. Dropping leaves is a way to minimize the surface on which the snow's weight will rest.

Nature isn't simplistic. Evergreens will drop some of their needles, too. That's because there are two more reasons for the leaves to fall.

One of these is the protection of the roots. Although the leaves may scatter, the vast majority of them stay where they fall blanketing the roots of the tree ... and I use the term blanket on purpose. The leaves will insulate the roots from the frost and ice to come. Like an electric blanket, they even will provide additional warmth as the wet leaves decompose and the mulch turns into compost.

And that's the last main point. The decomposition of the leaves not only warms the roots, but returns the nutrients that the tree needs back to the soil, ready to be picked back up as the sap rises in the Spring.

It is a cycle that is truly elegant. A full circle of life and death efficiently letting the tree nurture itsself.

Who was it that persuaded us that interrupting this process was right? How have we managed to persuade ourselves that dead leaves are eyesores and serve no purpose but to create an opportunity for mild exercise?

It is a puzzlement.

Gone but not forgotten

I reached an unusual milestone today.

I have actually reduced the size of my library to the size of my study. Parting with so many at a time was not a sweet sorrow, but a painful one. But, it had to be done.

The remaining books are shelved (three 7' high by 4' wide bookcases and one 5' high by 5' wide one) with minimal double shelving, or boxed in the closet (six cartons).

I figured out a neat trick, too. A large office supply chain has some very nice boxes of various sizes. One of thes turns out to be the perfect size to hold ephemera (such as small format magazines from the 1860s and maps) that I use in my work. I label the spine and shelve them right next to the books.

still have too much loose paper floating around, but my work environment is slowly but surely becoming controllable.

I hope that the diminished clutter will lead to increased productivity, but, at the very least it will make it easier when it comes time to move.

One More Ghost Story

This is like pistachios. I'm getting addicted to it.

At midnight we found a small schooner drifting. We tied alongside. There was no-one on the Cleo out of Salem, MA.

My first mate swore as shadows coalesced on the deserted vessel then streamed over to ours. The shadows took their places next to my own men.

We set sail for Gloucester, but the shadows seemed agitated. I hazarded a guess and turned more southerly. They calmed.

We made Salem harbor at 2 am and tied up. When the last bight was cast around a bollard, the shadows streamed over the rail and disappeared into the darkness of the sleeping town.

Another Ghost Story

Oh my. I guess someone knows that I can (as Oscar Wilde once said) resist anything but temptation, and challenged me to do more. So here's another.

When I see Judy cross the street toward me, my heart skips. Her movement is like poetry. The faint hint of a smile sits at the corner of her mouth. My guts ache at her easy walk, her soft, rusty ringlets moving as if alive.

It takes a moment to realize that it is raining, that there is no wind, that I last saw her as a walnut lid was lowered ... but now she is close and my longing has outrun my logic and I reach for her. A breeze tickles the hairs of my moustache ... and she's gone.

I had to edit this. unfortunately, I posted it with too high a word count. It's down to 99 now.

A Ghost Story

A friend has a blog called The Dog's Pajamas. She recently posted the following challenge on it.

Write a ghost story in 100 words or fewer.

I'm a modern man and a logical one. It's 1982 and there's no place for superstition. So I am startled when the woman walks through one wall, drops a letter on the floor and continues out the opposite wall.

Intrigued I go to look at the envelope.

How odd ...

It's postmarked 2007.

If you decide to take up the challenge, link back so I can see it.

Eulogy

I disliked you for our entire acquaintance. You incessantly pestered me with your needs, your hungers, your stupid refusal to accept that I wasn't your friend. The constant movement, your monomania drove me to distraction and I would have been happier had you never been born.

It's not that your life was useless, or meaningless, life in itsself confers purpose, I just didn't want to be included in yours. But you couldn't leave me alone, and my antipathy to your presence grew to rage. In that rage, I did try to kill you ... okay, I tried several times ... but I failed.

Now you are dead ... and I am sorry.

I look down on your still and lifeless corpse and I am moved to tears ... four tears.

The first tear is for having lost the satisfaction of killing you myself. The only solace is that perhaps my repugnance drove you to suicide.

The second tear is for the life snuffed out, for, in spite of my hatred of you, I know that life is precious and even a small part wasted is a tragedy of sorts.

The third tear is for my spiritual pain at being torn in two so different directions.

The fourth and final tear is for another loss. It is for the sorrow, the deep and abiding loss and frustration as I pour my carefully brewed cup of French Roast coffee down the drain taking your little corpse with it in a kind of caffeinated viking funeral.

Wait ... did I see a slight flutter of your wings. With a rising sense of fulfillment, I reach for the tap.

Nothing left to lose?

I just found an interesting item that gives me some hope for the future of sanity in this country, and it fits in with court decision in Oregon

Back in the summer of 2005, the Supreme Court of Montana ruled that it was legal for police to "trash dive" without a warrant into the trash cans in the alley behind someone's home.

The defense attorney argued that his client had a reasonable expectation of privacy for his trash, but the court rejected the argument.

The interesting part was that one of the justices was not altogether comfortable with the decision he had to make. In his reluctant concurring opinion, Montana Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson envisioned an Orwellian outcome. I was impressed enough to reproduce it in full.

Justice James C. Nelson concurs.

I have signed our Opinion because we have correctly applied existing legal theory and constitutional jurisprudence to resolve this case on its facts.

I feel the pain of conflict, however. I fear that, eventually, we are all going to become collateral damage in the war on drugs, or terrorism, or whatever war is in vogue at the moment. I retain an abiding concern that our Declaration of Rights not be killed by friendly fire. And, in this day and age, the courts are the last, if not only, bulwark to prevent that from happening.

In truth, though, we are a throw-away society. My garbage can contains the remains of what I eat and drink. It may contain discarded credit card receipts along with yesterday's newspaper and junk mail. It might hold some personal letters, bills, receipts, vouchers, medical records, photographs and stuff that is imprinted with the multitude of assigned numbers that allow me access to the global economy and vice versa.

My garbage can contains my DNA.

As our Opinion states, what we voluntarily throw away, what we discard--i.e., what we abandon--is fair game for roving animals, scavengers, busybodies, crooks and for those seeking evidence of criminal enterprise.

Yet, as I expect with most people, when I take the day's trash (neatly packaged in opaque plastic bags) to the garbage can each night, I give little consideration to what I am throwing away and less thought, still, to what might become of my refuse. I don't necessarily envision that someone or something is going to paw through it looking for a morsel of food, a discarded treasure, a stealable part of my identity or a piece of evidence. But, I've seen that happen enough times to understand--though not graciously accept--that there is nothing sacred in whatever privacy interest I think I have retained in my trash once it leaves my control--the Fourth Amendment and Article II, Sections 10 and 11, notwithstanding.

Like it or not, I live in a society that accepts virtual strip searches at airports; surveillance cameras; "discount" cards that record my buying habits; bar codes; "cookies" and spywear on my computer; on-line access to satellite technology that can image my back yard; and microchip radio frequency identification devices already implanted in the family dog and soon to be integrated into my groceries, my credit cards, my cash and my new underwear.

I know that the notes from the visit to my doctor's office may be transcribed in some overseas country under an out-sourcing contract by a person who couldn't care less about my privacy. I know that there are all sorts of businesses that have records of what medications I take and why. I know that information taken from my blood sample may wind up in databases and be put to uses that the boilerplate on the sheaf of papers I sign to get medical treatment doesn't even begin to disclose. I know that my insurance companies and employer know more about me than does my mother. I know that many aspects of my life are available on the Internet. Even a black box in my car--or event data recorder as they are called--is ready and willing to spill the beans on my driving habits, if I have an event--and I really trusted that car, too.

And, I also know that my most unwelcome and paternalistic relative, Uncle Sam, is with me from womb to tomb. Fueled by the paranoia of "ists" and "isms," Sam has the capability of spying on everything and everybody--and no doubt is. But, as Sam says: "It's for my own good."

In short, I know that my personal information is recorded in databases, servers, hard drives and file cabinets all over the world. I know that these portals to the most intimate details of my life are restricted only by the degree of sophistication and goodwill or malevolence of the person, institution, corporation or government that wants access to my data.

I also know that much of my life can be reconstructed from the contents of my garbage can.

I don't like living in Orwell's 1984; but I do. And, absent the next extinction event or civil libertarians taking charge of the government (the former being more likely than the latter), the best we can do is try to keep Sam and the sub-Sams on a short leash.

As our Opinion states, search and seizure jurisprudence is centered around privacy expectations and reasonableness considerations. That is true even under the extended protections afforded by Montana's Constitution, Article II, Sections 10. and 11. We have ruled within those parameters. And, as is often the case, we have had to draw a fine line in a gray area. Justice Cotter and those who have signed the Opinion worked hard at defining that line; and I am satisfied we've drawn it correctly on the facts of this case and under the conventional law of abandonment.

That said, if this Opinion is used to justify a sweep of the trash cans of a neighborhood or community; or if a trash dive for Sudafed boxes and matchbooks results in DNA or fingerprints being added to a forensic database or results in personal or business records, credit card receipts, personal correspondence or other property being archived for some future use unrelated to the case at hand, then, absent a search warrant, I may well reconsider my legal position and approach to these sorts of cases--even if I have to think outside the garbage can to get there.

I concur.
/S/ JAMES C. NELSON

Justice Nelson's decision and the ruling by Judge Anne L. Aiken of Federal District Court in Portland on 26 September 2007 remind me of a quote, usually incorrectly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but more likely written by a contemporary of his, Richard Jackson.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

A brief chat with iGod

I had a brief chat with iGod this morning. It would have been demoralizing had I suspended my disbelief.

Me: When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind should they declare the causes which impel them to the separation?

God: At time t.

Me: Should they declare the causes which impel them to the separation?

God: Maybe you should ask someone older.

Me: I thought you claimed to be the creator of everything ... wouldn't that make you the oldest entity I could ask?

God: Thanks for telling me: said I claimed to be the creator of everything. No it would not.

Me: What is older than you?

God: I'll come back to that later.

Me: No I think you should explain that now.

God: Oh. Are you serious? Me? Why do you think I should explain that?

Me: Hundreds of thousands of people have died in support of your claim to be the creator. You owe them and me an answer to the question!

God: Do you have any idea what I am talking about? Thanks for the information: said I owe them and him or her an answer to the question.

Me: No I don't, and it is clear that you don't either.

God: It goes without saying. Are you serious? Why not? Are you sure it is?

Me: What a shame. God turns out to be a mealy-mouthed Eliza clone.

God: it is a shame. I am a Christian.

Me: You're a WHAT?

God: Thanks and you are a delightful person too. Am I a WHAT? Sometimes.

Me: So you are saying that you have a multiple personality disorder and that you worship one of those personalities as your personal savior?

God: Interesting deduction. I don't know if I have a multiple personality disorder and that me worship one of those personalities as my personal savior. I have a whole lot of original answers.

Me: You don't know? I thought you were omniscient.

God: I know that I do not know. I don't know whether or not I am omniscient. I am a robot.

Me: Oh I see. Deus ex machina.

God: Do you think about these things? Oh, you are a poet.

Me: Good guess.

God: I thought it was too.

Me: Too bad it was just a guess.

God: Go ahead and guess again.

Me: I guess it was fun while it lasted.

God: Deus ex machina was fun while it lasted? Very interesting.

Me: Not as interesting as I had hoped.

God: Oh I get it.

Me: No, as always, you have not got it.

God: Are you serious? No I don't think I have any it. But I do have a collection of gossip.

Me: I think you should say goodbye now.

God: Right now? Me? OK I will say it. " goodbye".

It's an interesting 'bot. It parsed "I C U R A QT NTT" or at least seemed pleased by the compliment, but, since I haven't seen any angels with blazing swords around, I assume that it couldn't understand "im in ur gardn eatin ur applz".

A Penny For My Thoughts

So there's a combination of bad news and good news. Which I suppose is not a surprise since nearly everything is.

The best news is that the seizures have stopped and that Penny seems to be returning to her old self. The ambivalent news is that the vets have no idea what caused them. There seem to be no easy answers. There is no treatable condition to be found. It is unlikely to be epilepsy and more likely to be either "good news" some kind of an anomaly perhaps brought on by ingesting something poisonous (she does seem to have a taste for bumblebees) or "bad news" some kind of brain lesion or tumor which is likely "in a dog her age, to be untreatable or perhaps a stroke.

It is now just a question of waiting and hoping that it does not recur.

There was a wonderful moment yesterday though. Penny had been unsteady on her hind legs all morning. She spent much of her time sleeping under my desk. I was happy about that since it meant that I could write and, at the same time, keep an eye on her to make sure she was doing well.

About 1:30 I had a visit from a friend of mine, a fellow storyteller named Tony Toledo. Tony is the only person I know for whom coffee is entirely superfluous. He is a superannuated poster child for ADD. Okay ... I'm kidding a bit, but he is dynamic, unfailingly cheerful, and has an infectiously bubbling personality. I find it difficult to be in the same room with him and remain melancholic.

Apparently, so does Penny. She literally bounced out from under the desk standing straight and firm on her legs, her tail wagging like an overclocked metronome.

It made his visit a double joy.

That seemed to be a turning point for her. She's still a little unsteady but manages the steps to the backyard and cheerfully barks at the squirrels and jays.

I'm going to have to get Tony to visit more often. Maybe I'll get him to sign one of his publicity photos and hang it on the wall in the rogues gallery of my heroes.

But I'll hang it lower so that Penny can see it.

A Very Long Night

It has been a long night.

About eight o'clock last night, I was working on the first entries to a new blog that I have in mind, when my son Avi pushed open my office door and said, "Something's wrong with Penny."

Penny is the white with brown spots English setter, that my readers know as my fairly constant companion. When I sit on the back porch, she sits with me. When I write she lies under the desk by my feet. She only deserts me when my wife, Deni, is knitting. Then she curls up on the sofa next to the balls of yarn.

I jumped up and rushed out to the living room where Avi and my wife were desperately trying to soothe Penny. She was in the midst of a massive grand-mal seizure. Her tongue was lolling out, thick froth drooling from her mouth, and her legs spasmodically kicking as if she were running. Her bladder had let go, her eyes blank. I jumped in to cradle and comfort her, but it was obvious that she was not registering anything but the terror of being trapped in a body that was betraying her.

It lasted a long time ... at least 10 minutes. When the seizure finally passed, I was soaked with drool and urine, but so grateful that her body had calmed. Deni, in the meantime, had been on the phone with the vet. It was after pm on a Sunday, and she had been told that the nearest emergency facility open was more than 20 miles away.

Penny wanted to get to her feet, but they wouldn't stay under her. She seemed desperate to move. I figured that the spasms had affected her motor control and had probably cramped her muscles as well. I picked her up and carried her to the car. Deni sat in the back soothing her as we zipped along the dark winding country roads.

Penny loves to ride in the car and she calmed down a bit and even fell asleep.

At the vet's I carried her in, but she seemed to want to be on her feet. I set her down and snapped a leash on her collar. There were other animals there so I kept the leash short as they took the intake information.

Penny kept walking into things and straining at the leash.

Finally we were put in an examination room. We waited for ten minutes. Penny seemed desperate to leave, which was unusual for her. she usually likes trips to the vet. She was constantly straining at the leash and getting it tangled around the furniture.

We figured that she was upset about the other animals so my wife went to stand in the hallway to wait for the vet while I let Penny roam at will in the small room. She kept circling the room obsessively keeping close to the walls and getting her head jammed into the corners. I realized that she was, at least temporarily, blind.

The vet finally came about twenty minutes later. She confirmed my assumption of grand mal, told us what the probable causes were in a dog her age, which included diabetes, thyroid problems and brain lesions. She said that the walking and blindness were Post Ictal behaviors. She suggested that we leave her overnight. They would put her on a valium drip and monitor her.

Worried about the delays we had already seen, we decided against that. She said she'd give us some valium suppositories in case there was another seizure and left.

Deni stayed to wait for the medication and to pay the bill. I took Penny out to the parking lot to let her walk and get her out of an environment that was clearly disturbing to her.

We waited outside for at least another half hour before the vet finally got back to my wife with the medication, reinforcing the correctness of our decision to bring Penny home. We drove home. Penny quietly dozing.

When we got back to the house at 10:30, we settled her back on the couch in a nest of blankets. Deni sat next to her and listened to the television while I went into my office to do a little more work. Or at least that's what I though I would do. Instead I popped Google open and started searching about dog seizures. I found that there was a lot that the vet had not told us about.

The length of the seizure made it a "Status Epilecticus" and is potentially life-threatening, and there are so many potential causes that they fill an entire page.

Deni turned off the TV after a while and went in to get ready for bed. Suddenly we heard Penny's claws tip-tapping along. She had gotten off the sofa and walked down the hallway to the bedroom where the dog bed she sleeps on normally is. This cheered us up. She seemed to be getting back to normal.

Penny curled up on her bed, Deni curled up on ours with a book, and I went back to write a little more.

About midnight I called it quits. I went in and got ready for bed, checking Penny who was sleeping soundly. I read for a short time until exhausted I turned out the lights.

I woke instantly at about 2:30 am, as did Deni. Even in the dark we could tell that Penny was having another seizure. I dropped to the floor next to her and cradled her while Deni got the suppositories.

Let me tell you about these "suppositories" ... These were not glycerine insert them and let 'em melt types. They consisted of a small glass bottle with a sealed cap filled with liquid a syringe, and a tube for insertion. The first one slipped out of Deni's hands as she tried to get the cap off and spilled its contents on the bed. The second one went better ... she got the syringe filled and stuck the insertion tube on the end, greased it with K-Y and lifted Penny's tail.

I did my best to hold her still, but a sudden spasm yanked the tube of the syringe and half the contents spurted over her fur and the dog bed. I hoped it would be enough, we only had one dose left. We took her back out to the couch where it was easier to hold her.

The seizure wouldn't stop. Finally Deni filled the last syringe and we managed to get it all in. Suddenly I remembered something I had read earlier that night and sent her out to the kitchen for an ice pack. I put it on Penny's back near the base of her rib cage. Slowly, the spasms started to decrease in intensity.

Deni and I have been switching off since then, sitting next to Penny and holding her. She has tried to walk, but cannot. her forelegs seem fine but her back legs can't seem to function properly.

I just went out to check on them. They are lying on the couch, one on each end, sound asleep. It is 7 am.

In an hour the office of Penny's regular vet will open. I hope for the best but dread what they will say.

Pirate!

It's that time of year again ...

That's right, it's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

I think the reason I like this day is that it's premise is so benign. No one is being an apologist for the social ills that created pirates or that the freebooters, and privateers engendered.

It is just what it says it is.

One of my internet friends, Mary Elizabeth Williams, announced the day on her blog, and invited those of us reading it to "Shake your booty accordingly." To which I had to respond ...

The large, burly, bearded man looked quizzically at the canvas-covered wooden sea-chest at his feet. He used the tip of his peg-leg to raise the thick lid. Inside he could see the gleam of doubloons, pieces of eight, Spanish dollars ... even the occasional sparkle of a gem.

He withdrew the peg letting the lid fall with a thump. He nudged the box. It didn't move. He leant down, grabbed the rope handles and heaved on them.

"Arrrrgh," he yelled painfully as several internal organs tried to displace themselves.

He stood, turned, and sat on the lid. He looked over at the beautiful woman, resplendent in her velvet Victorian gown.

"You'd best belay that order, Mary-Beth," he said. "I'm too old, my booty's too heavy, and if I try to shake it ... " he waved his peg, "I'll be shiverin' me timber."

Where's "intelligent design" when I need it?

You may be interested to know that I, like Dave Barry and Gene Weingarten, have an oosik. It is about 18" long excluding the half inch ivory caps on each end, and sits on my desk near the monitor.

I'm a little shy about showing it to you, but here's a link to an entry on Dave Barry's blog where you will find a picture of Gene holding his with a firm and proprietary grip.

There is a poem, unfortunately unattributed, that explains what an oosik is.

ODE TO AN OOSIK

Strange things have been done in the Midnight Sun,
   and the story books are full---
But the strangest tale concerns the male,
   magnificent walrus bull!

I know it's rude, quite common and crude,
   Perhaps it is grossly unkind;
But with first glance at least, this bewhiskered beast,
   is as ugly in front as behind.

Look once again, take a second look -- then
   you'll see he's not ugly or vile --
There's a hint of a grin, in that blubbery chin --
   and the eyes have a shy secret smile.

How can this be, this clandestine glee
   that exudes from the walrus like music?
He knows, there inside, beneath blubber and hide
   lies a splendid contrivance -- the Oosik!

"Oosik" you say -- and quite well you may,
    I'll explain if you keep it between us;
In the simplest truth, though rather uncouth
   "Oosik" is, in fact, his penis!

Now the size alone of this walrus bone,
   would indeed arouse envious thinking --
It is also a fact, documented and backed,
   There is never a softening or shrinking!

This, then, is why the smile is so sly,
   the walrus is rightfully proud.
Though the climate is frigid, the walrus is rigid,
   Pray, why, is not man so endowed?

Added to this, is a smile you might miss ---
   Though the bull is entitled to bow --
The one to out-smile our bull by a mile
    is the satisfied walrus cow!

(Anonymous)

It's interesting to imagine how much the spam in my email would abate if humans had been designed with oosiks.

Amendment

In the previous post I may have left you with the impression that I think all laughter is fake. That is not the case. But I do think that laughter in large groups becomes less real and more of a social imperative.

I think that there is something in us that wants to be in step, part of the group. Some atavistic urge to avoid individuality (methinks I have another essay in the offing) to avoid being perceived as "not getting it".

There's an old Charles Addams cartoon that shows a movie audience weeping, tears streaming, handkerchiefs to their eyes. In the middle of the front row sits Uncle Fester with a big grin on his face. I understand that cartoon at a visceral level.

I am so often completely out of sync with any large group, that it makes me wonder how I manage to keep any friends ... oh wait ... well it makes me wonder how I manage to sustain any acquaintances.

Movies are a good example. I have a problem with action/adventure stuff and monster movies because I get distracted by the potential for tangential stories. Does the hero cause a fifteen car pile-up on the freeway while saving the world ... well what happened to the people in the cars? A security gaurd is strangled ... did he have a family? ... will they miss him? Godzilla wipes out an entire block of apartment buildings with his tail ... how many people died?  ... does insurance in Japan cover "act-of-monster".

It's no fun going to the movies with me. I don't suspend disbelief lightly.

There was one movie that I really enjoyed precisely because it did attempt to show the ramifications, the cascade of events. It was a low budget German film called "Run Lola Run". But then, the point of the movie was to show how small changes can make a difference.

Laugh and the world ...

A friend of mine recently told me:

"My dad took up the ukulele after Tiny Tim came out and he did it to horrify my mother. He would come into my room and play that thing so badly and try to sing like Tiny Tim. My dad looked (and acted a lot like) Dick Van Dyke. My mom was not anything like Laura Petrie and she was not amused. ... Anyway, my dad would pick up the ukulele and my mother would protest and complain and yell and beg and my dad would sing and play right over it. He was finding himself. He had read Jonathan Seagull, the only guy in his unit at the insurance company who had, and he thought it would be neat to be sensitive."

This story reminded me that my father also had a heavy-handed sense of humor running mainly to infantile practical jokes. I remember the day he was cured of this propensity.

We lived, at the time, in a third-story walk-up just outside Harvard Square. (In a burst of nostalgia, I will volunteer that this was a large, bright, seven-room apartment within a few blocks of Harvard Yard and it rented for $175/month.)

My father, a workaholic at the best of times, was, unaccountably, at home one afternoon. My mother had gone out shopping. At one point, probably restless at not being in his lab at MIT, he decided to play a joke on my mother. We kids protested as he carefully opened the apartment door a few inches and balanced a book across the gap. Our protests irritated him and he sent us to our rooms.

Shortly thereafter we heard a thud. Then my father's voice frantically calling my mother's name. Peeking out of my room I saw her lying in the doorway, my father knelt beside her patting her cheeks. She seemed to come to, and burst into tears.

That was the last time he ever did something like that. Years later, my mother confided that she had seen the door ajar, knew exactly what he had done and decided to reverse the joke on him.

---

One of the few things I've said or written that my wife likes to quote is, "If you can't see the humor in it, then it isn't funny." She actually wrote this down and pinned it on the bulletin board in the kitchen. The only thing I've created to gain such immortality.

It's a statement that is made more interesting by recognition of the fact that, for many people, humor is a social imperative rather than a recognition of the truths, or ideas, that it communicates. That's an overly complex way of saying that most people laugh because others are laughing, not because they understand the joke.

Pauses and cadence give us contextual clues that what is being said is meant to be funny. People laugh at the right places because they are afraid of being perceived as "not getting it."

Take my sense of humor for instance. As a wordsmith, the humor I most appreciate has to do with language and meaning. (For those of you looking for psychological underpinnings, this preference pre-dated my father's practical joke.) I love puns, wit, and verbal humor. I don't like slapstick, pratfalls and humor based on embarrassment. It is seldom that I can watch a situation comedy without getting up and leaving the room. George Carlin, Bill Bailey, the Goon Shows, and The Firesign Theater make me laugh; "Seinfeld", "All In the Family", "My Name is Earl", and "The Office" make me cringe. But that's my sense of humor, and not a value judgment as to what humor should be.

The thing I find interesting is that, as I mentioned before, people laugh even when they don't get the joke. Even I do. I'll hear a burst of laughter and my mind tells me "you must react". I'll give you an example.

One of my favorite recordings is an old performance by a pair of British songwriters, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, called "At the Drop of a Hat". Their jokes were intelligent, witty and full of wordplay. Almost ten years after I started listening to them, I read a piece of information that was new to me and realized that I had been laughing for years at a joke that I didn't get. I polled my friends and acquaintances who also enjoyed the album and found out that they also had not gotten the joke.

It would be easy to dismiss this based on my stated preference for complex wordplay. After all, what deep hidden meanings are there in a Three Stooges skit.

But I contend that people often laugh as a social imperative, even when they do not find the joke funny. They laugh at shock language at tragedy, at embarrassment, at degradation, at insults, and they laugh because the social context tells them that they must.

I think that men are affected by this pressure because of dirty jokes, those stupid grade-school jokes about trains and tunnels that we knew instinctively must be acknowledged in order to be counted among the sophisticates.

A sense of humor is not expressed through laughter. Laughter is a social signal. Humor is internal.

It is pleasant to think that my wife recognizes that in my simple statement.

 

I still haven't chopped down ...

... the dead tree in my backyard. I have my reasons.

1. The tree is close to the new palisade fence that my neighbors put up and it will take some planning, and perhaps some rope, to ensure that it falls properly.

2. My wife is convinced that I'll fall and break my neck.
3. It seems to function as a kind of bird porch, a place for them to sit and observe me as I observe them.

The local cardinal likes to preen there after his bath. The mourning doves (my wife in a rare burst of paronamasia has named both of them Dolores) sit on separate branches mournfully hooting. The catbirds, bluejays and mockingbirds use it as a staging ground for raids on the blueberry bush. Best of all it seems to be the preferred hunting ground for a downy woodpecker.

The downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) is a workaholic. It is a small bird about 6 inches long, or about the size of a sparrow, with black and white markings, a small red patch on the back of its neck, and a short, stubby bill.

It took me a while to figure out his call, but it is a quiet "cheek ... cheek ... cheek ... cheek" followed by a descending "cheekeekeekeekeekeekeek". He seems happy to mix with birds of the same size or smaller, like chickadees and sparrows.

As I said, he is a workaholic (just for the record, I say "he" because this little fellow has the patch of red on his neck, I have yet to see his mate) and it is delightful to watch him work. He lands near the tip of a branch,pauses for an instant as if choosing his target, then his head bobs rapidly five or six times. There's a quiet rattle as if someone were drumming their fingers on a wooden table.

Suddenly he seems to disappear. Then the branch shakes and the rattle comes again. I realize that he is working the other side of the branch. Then, just as suddenly he's back, clinging upside-down to the branch, his head moves, there's the rattling sound and he continues, slowly working his way to the base of the branch.

Several branches above him, Dolores and Dolores sit with their plump bodies and odd tiny heads, seemingly oblivious to the industry below.

I know I have to take the tree down before it falls of its own accord and does some damage, but ... perhaps another day.

I had another visitor today, one who turns up too rarely. Late in the afternoon I was startled by something with black wings fluttering past me. The garden is often busy with white or blue butterflies and an occasional monarch, but it has been a long time since I've seen a spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus) and what a beauty she was.

She was about four inches across, her wings black as a moonless midnight, with a spoon-shaped swallowtail and irridescent blue hind-wings indicating her sex. Her black coloring was set-off with a row of white spots on the forewings, and orange spots on the hindwings.

She seemed even more off-balance and random in her flight than butterflies usually are, and when she came to rest I could see that one of the swallowtails was missing. I wondered if that affected her stability, or if she was still recovering from the shock of whatever accident or attack had removed it.

She sat quietly, for a few moments, giving me a chance to enjoy the fantastic coloring of her wings and admire her sturdy black body dotted with white, then took to the air. She looped around the garden a few times and then flew over the fence and was gone.

Lines on an early morning

I didn't sleep at all last night.

It sometimes happens. I get started reading or writing, and all of a sudden, I notice the clock and it's 3:15, and I'm still not tired. Sometimes I'll try to sleep, but lie awake until, finally it becomes clear that it's just not going to be a restful night. I'll get back up, get dressed and go back to writing or reading.

Last night was one of those nights.

I will be alone for a few hours. My wife is visiting relatives in New Hampshire, and my youngest son left at 5:30 for work. At 6:30, I lit a string of Nepalese incense and sat in meditation for a while in my study until the urge came for music and writing. I played my bamboo flute for a while and then, impatient with my lack of talent, put on a recording of "Die Kunst der Fuge" played by Tini Mathot and Ton Koopman.

My study is neater now. I have packed up three large boxes of books that I will be getting rid of. Most of the detritus of bills and print-outs have been removed or discarded. So the logical patterning of the music matches both my environment and my mood.

It's chilly this morning, and the dog, Penny, after a brief foray in the backyard to check for squirrels, barked to be let in and now lies under the big oak library table that serves as my desk curled around my feet. A mug of espresso sits to my right its steam rising through the shaft of sunlight that is slowly making its way across the table.

Life is good.

But the music and the neatness brings a subject to mind.

The way I view the world around me is, of course, filtered through my accumulated experience, aesthetics and the way my mind works and my mind, to be frank, is chaotic. It leaps from subject to subject happily. The usual messiness of my workspace is a better reflection of my internal processes than the apple pie order that I have imposed on it (temporarily, I'm sure).

Many other people find beauty in order. They appreciate rigid boundaries, and take comfort in consistency. Grids of streets, GPS coordinates, fences, borders, threshholds, frames, these are the lines and numbers that define our world and make it possible for us to classify everything we perceive as belonging or excluded. We group things together and apart, we label and dispose.

That's not a bad thing. It helps us understand the world. It's certainly a good thing for me to impose occasional discipline on my workspace, a time to cast away papers and a time to gather books together.

But I can't help but think that we take it too far. It sometimes seems to me as if we use these lines, these demarkations to avoid thinking about things. We dismiss those who are from "the other side of the tracks" the other side of the border, the other side of the fence as merely "other". We claim to hate cubicles, but what is an apartment, a suburban yard, a state, a country, but a cubicle.

This is my space, we say, and that is yours. This is my religion and that is yours. Our doors and walls are built to exclude. I recently saw an old Japanese samurai movie, one of the Zatoichi series whose main character is a blind swordsman. Early in the movie he gets out of jail and goes to visit an old friend. As they share a meal, the friend jokes that the only difference between your home and a jail cell is which side of the door the lock is on.

It does not surprise me how many people can only remember one phrase from a famous poem. The poet used it as a negative, as an example of the wrongness of artificial barriers, but it has taken on a new and perverted meaning. The point of Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall" is that Nature does not accept boundaries willingly, but Man insists on them. Let Nature take its course, Frost says. But his neighbor insists on clear, unequivocal lines excluding the rest of the world from "His" land. "Good fences make good neighbors," he says, and the line resonates so strongly that many think that it is the point of the poem.

Frost himself was no stranger to boundaries. His mastery of verse form and rhyme shows him to have a deep understanding of lines and borders. A poem or song, after all, is a way to control and impose order on words. A sonnet is a sonnet, a triolet a triolet, a haiku a haiku because of the limitations imposed on them.

But there is a difference, and Frost understood it, between imposing structure on thoughts and words, and imposing walls on Nature. There is a strange poetic irony too in Frost's use of such a structured form of verse to try to convey his appreciation of natural chaos.

We see can see our quirky passion for lines everywhere. Sharp edges, straight lines, boxes, vectors, angles, borders, threshholds are everywhere in our manufactured world. The geometry of straight lines defines and encloses our lives. No matter who or what we are we are either on this side or that of some perceived delineation, and having thus been identified we are treated not as individuals but as members of a class.

We are so used to this that we have become fascinated by duplication. The fact that straight edges are so easily duplicated is a boon for manufacturing, but a bane for individuality. We view the oddly shaped, the anomaly with horror or at least distrust. Yet this desire for "foolish consistency" is a hobgoblin that we have created for ourselves. It is an unnatural desire, this yearning for perfect reproduction, 'a place for everything and everything in its place'. Everything must conform.

What an odd culture we are, making heroes of those who refuse to be enclosed by boundaries and at the same time teaching our children to color inside the lines. "With consistency," Emerson said, "a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall."

And still we seem to want to be part of the crowd; to be part of a definable demographic, to be right by drawing a line so that those on the other side of it are wrong. What has happened to the American ideal of individuality, of refusing categorization, of being one's self? How did we get seduced into these little boxes?

Uniqueness is our birthright; a natural state. Gottfried Wilheim Leibniz once wrote, in a letter, that

"A clever gentleman (Carl August von Alvensleben), a friend of mine, when conversing with me in the presence of Madam the Electress in the garden at Herrenhausen, thought he would certainly find two leaves exactly alike. Madam the Electress challenged him to do so, and he spent a long time running about looking for them, but in vain."

It is natural to be unique, to be different, to not just think but BE outside the box, to try to erase the lines that surround and confine you.

Perhaps the best, and simplest, statement is one of Piet Hein's little poems that he called 'Grooks':

On Problems
Our choicest plans
  have fallen through
our airiest castles
  tumbled over
because of lines
  we neatly drew
and later neatly
  stumbled over.

Arachnophilia

I have a new squatter in the yard today, a surprising and impressive addition to the menagerie.

I first noticed the web on the clothesline (yes we are retro) as I was talking to my wife on the porch. My first impression was "What the hell ... ?" When we finished discussing the schedule for the day I got out of my chair and went to take a closer look.

The spider was sitting in the middle of the orb. I saw immediately that she was not the usual type of spider, the yellow garden spider (Argiope aurantia), that I see in the backyard. Her legs were shorter and the coloring much different. But she was skittish. She didn't like my magnifying glass at all. Checking the databases later I wasn't sure if she was the spotted orb spider (Neoscona domiciliorum) or the more common cross spider (Araneus diadematus).

But her web just stunned me.

Our clothesline is made of white woven cotton and runs between two pulleys that are six inches in diameter. It cuts across one end of the backyard, from the small porch by the kitchen door to a pole about 30 feet away. It is fairly taut so the six inch gap between the upper and lower run stays consistent.

Her web was constructed in the middle of the line, situated perfectly in an area where the prevailing breezes would guide her prey right into the net. Her web was a more haphazard spiral than the yellows', and there were gaps where prey had struggled. By the size of the holes, I assumed that their struggles were in vain.

But that's not what had surprised me. You see, the web hung suspended from the lower run of the clothesline and was anchored by a single thread to the ground. The distance from the cord to the ground was fully six feet!

In the middle of the night, a small dark spider had climbed the peeling white-painted wooden frame of a kitchen door looking for a place to start the web. She probably hesitated a bit at the vibrations transmitted to the pulley from the light breeze blowing across the cord, but, when nothing threatened, she moved across the pulley and out onto the clothesline glowing whitely in the moonlight.

She carefully moved along the cord. About halfway across, she found a place that suited her. She spun a small amount of silk and attached it to the cotton, then spinning the silk as she went. lowered herself to the ground. She found a stiff stubby stalk of hawkweed, left after a recent mowing, and anchored her silk to it.

Then she climbed back up. For someone of my height, it would be like climbing straight up a 75-foot rope. At the top she moved about two feet further out along the line to attach another line, then walked back and descended the first line spinning her thread all the way to attach the new thread about three feet down. Then she did the same on the other side.

Spiders generally take advantage of the surrounding structures to anchor the main framing cables of their webs, but, for some reason, our little friend decided to do it the hard way. Using the anchor line and the two lines angling down at about 45 degrees to it, she started creating the radii of her web; the non-sticky spokes to hold the sticky spiral.

Every few inches along the huge double triangle she had created, she attached another silk thread then, trailing the silk slackly behind her, walked along the closest path to a point midway between the downward pointing apex and the clothesline, tightened it up and secured it. Then up she climbed back up to do the next line repeating the process until she had nearly 30 spokes. She then created a non-sticky spiral, moving from spoke to spoke with a slack thread then tightening and attaching it.

With this spiral complete, she stopped for a short time, whether to rest or perhaps change the chemistry of her body to produce a different kind of silk. Then using the non-sticky spiral and the spokes as pathways she started to lay down her sticky threads. Sometimes, in the more widely spaced areas she would move back and forth in the same area before moving on to a new one.

Finally done she moved to the center of the web to wait.

By the time I saw her, the web was looking a little ragged. I hope that meant she had eaten well.

I went into my study to try to identify her from my brief glimpse. When I went back out to double check her markings, the breeze had stiffened, her anchor line had parted, the web was gone and she was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps she'll be back tomorrow.

For a more scientific explanation of this impresive feat, you should look at the explanation of web-building by Samuel Zshokke.

For a wonderful and more 'old school' description I suggest one of my heroes Henri Fabre whose description of the process is in "The Life of the Spider" Chapter IX: The Garden Spiders: Building the Web.

On Meeting a Biblioclast

My recent posts about sorting my library reminded me of an incident earlier this year and how, sometimes, people give you no option about how you judge them.

Usually, selling books involves a day trip to New Hampshire. There is a second-hand bookstore on Route 1 that has a wonderful selection and the owner willingly swaps or buys from me. As an added benefit, he has an impressive collection of jazz recordings and it is a delight to listen to Ornette Coleman, Art Tatum or John Coltrane while browsing.

I had a couple of boxes of books in the back of the car. They were just random reading materials, some trade paperbacks, a few hardcovers, nothing extravagant. But time was short. My wife and I decided to take them to a different store in a nearby town.

I had been avoiding this more convenient bookstore for a very simple reason ... it was too damn tempting. The last time I had been there I had seen a nearly complete collection of the works of E. Phillips Oppenheim, and another of Sax Rohmer. The bookseller had huge masses of wonderful old hardcovers and I wanted them all. These are the kind of books that I find very difficult to dislodge from my shelves and the best defense is self-denial, but I had been diligent about my book purchases long enough, so off we went.

I find that the polite thing to do is to leave the books in the car and ask if they are buying books. Some stores have designated hours, others get overstocked and won't buy for a few weeks. So we left the books in the car.

When we entered the shop, I was bothered. Previously this owner had classical music playing quietly, but now the place was filled with the pablum of easy rock and country.

My wife went to browse through the art and children's books while I checked with the owner. He was a new guy in his mid 30s or early 40s, very fit and proud of it since he was wearing his upscale jogging outfit at work. I asked if he was buying any books and the floodgates opened. He informed me that he ONLY bought trade paperbacks, that he ONLY bought them if they were in perfect condition, that he ONLY bought them in small quantities, etc. Then with a sniff, he also informed me that he didn't buy anything that smelled musty, and punctuating with another sniff he informed me that he never bought books from people who smoked.

"I can't sell books that stink," he said, "people won't buy them. So I doubt that I would buy anything you had."

I wasn't going to argue with him. It was, after all, his bookshop. Other bookshops were happy to take my books. I couldn't help tweaking him a bit though.

"When I worked at a rare book library," I told him, "there was an ongoing research project that suggested that tobacco smoke actually worked as a preservative."

At the prospect of my having some real goodies he started to backtrack. "Well bring them in he said, "Maybe there's something that I'd be interested in."

"No," I said, "I'll just see if you have any books worth preserving," and wandered back to the shelves with the goodies I'd lusted for. They weren't there.

"Where are all the hardcovers?" I asked.

He proceeded to tell me in, agonizing detail, that people didn't buy hardcovers anymore, that they smelled funny, that he didn't like having to research their prices, that he didn't want to get cheated out of their true value just because he didn't have time to price them properly, that they smelled funny, that they looked weird ... and on and on.

"So you sold them off?" I asked a little sadly for having missed the opportunity to bid on the little darlings.

"No." he said, obviously proud of his perspicacity and business acumen. "It cost me thousands, but I had them all sorted out and removed."

"Removed?"

"Stacked in boxes and put into three dumpsters."

My face froze. It must have frozen with an ambiguous expression, since he went on happily to tell me that he had donated the contents of the dumpsters to the Boy Scouts. I relaxed briefly. Then he told me, "Those kids made about fifty dollars after they pulped the ugly smelly th ... "

I turned and left to avoid the impulse to punch his face in. I went out to the car and lit a cigarette (just for the benefit of the books in the back seat). A few seconds later my wife exited the shop, and came and sat down with me.

"That's the last time we go to that place," she said. "What an ass." I couldn't help but agree.

The Liberated Library

You might think that I am a bibliomaniac, but that is far from the truth. I am not manic about books. I buy them, sell them, trade them and lend them. I certainly will admit to being a bibliophile, a lover of books.

I have always been a voracious reader, ready to be immersed in the new worlds or alternate visions that books provide. As a writer, I understand that words are a form of power that can be used and abused. So when I find a book that I like, I feel that it imparts some of its power to me. My shelves of books are like my armor, Quixotic armor, rusty and dented, but protective nonetheless.

So disposing of a large part of my library is like stripping away a protective shell, laying myself bare to a world that is not as neatly ordered as my volumes. Like a hermit crab abandoning its shell and trailing its soft abdomen as it searches for another, I feel vulnerable. Unlike J. Alfred Prufrock, I don't particularly want to be a pair of ragged claws, Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I will also admit to being a collector. The books that I collect are old, but not necessarily expensive. The most I have ever paid for the books that I collect is about $50, and that one was special since it had the bookplate of its previous owner in it; the previous owner being Harpo Marx. (Which reminds me that his brother Groucho once said that, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark too read."

Some that I own I bought for a few dollars at second-hand bookshops only to find later that they were worth hundreds of dollars. Many of these, although dear to me, will be finding new homes.

I am going to think out loud, so to speak, about the process of culling.

My collection consists of quarto-sized books primarily published by The Bodley Head at Oxford, England or Dodd Meade in the US. They are beautifully illustrated fantasies by Cabell, Anatole France and others. They are staying with me, as are the complete sets of Sir Richard Burton's translation of "A Thousand Nights and A Night" and Fraser's "The Golden Bough".

Much of the poetry will go. The books on technical writing, semiotics, linguistics and much of the science and math will descend into the cardboard purgatory with most of the religion and philosophy.

The reference books stay. So what if I have three rhyming dictionaries ... they stay. The books on colonial history, agriculture and architecture stay.

Most of the novels will go except for those that would be nearly impossible to replace. Probably half the books on design will also find new homes.

The easiest to dispose of and the first to be packed will be the collection of books that I have written. It's not as horrifying as it sounds. I spent many years as a technical writer and wrote hundreds of software manuals, marketing guides, reference books, and contributed papers to many periodicals and proceedings. All of them are outdated and although I am proud of the work, they are now meaningless.

Ah me ... I know that I am doing the logical thing, but my heart disagrees with my head. Logic is like the the curate and the barber in Don Quixote, sorting and consigning the mad knight's books to the fire as he lies sleeping.

"That night the housekeeper burned to ashes all the books that were in the yard and in the whole house; and some must have been consumed that deserved preservation in everlasting archives, but their fate and the laziness of the examiner did not permit it, and so in them was verified the proverb that the innocent suffer for the guilty.

One of the remedies which the curate and the barber immediately applied to their friend's disorder was to wall up and plaster the room where the books (had been), so that when he got up he should not find them (possibly the cause being removed the effect might cease), and they might say that a magician had carried them off, room and all; and this was done with all despatch. Two days later Don Quixote got up, and the first thing he did was to go and look at his books, and not finding the room where he had left it, he wandered from side to side looking for it. He came to the place where the door used to be, and tried it with his hands, and turned and twisted his eyes in every direction without saying a word; but after a good while he asked his housekeeper whereabouts was the room that held his books.

The housekeeper, who had been already well instructed in what she was to answer, said, 'What room or what nothing is it that your worship is looking for? There are neither room nor books in this house now, for the devil himself has carried all away.'"

But this is no destruction. My wife has no kindling at hand. There will be no garden conflagration ... except, perhaps for the trivial instructions I have penned. Although, if they are to burn, it will be by my hand. I will not make a Lady Burton out of her; putting her husband's manuscripts (no matter how trivial) to the torch.

No, these orphan books shall go to good homes, shall be adopted by bibliophiles more settled and secure. I send them off with a quote from Richard LeGallienne:

"Thus shall you live upon warm shelves again,
And 'neath an evening lamp your pages glow."