Happy birthday, Harry!

"Anyway -- Harry," said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, "a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here -- I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right."

From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.

"Shakespeare is a civilizing influence"

From Debra Pickett's "Sunday Lunch with..." column (Chicago Sun-Times, July 30, 2006):

A conversation with Gaines is something of a mental roller coaster ride. Though she describes her approach to theater, and to Shakespeare in particular, as "not what you call 'intellectual'; it's very visceral," she is obviously a sophisticated and subtle thinker, one incredibly well-versed in the texts with which she works. But Gaines, 59, also waxes poetic about her love for shopping at Target and how being awarded an OBE (the Order of the British Empire, an honor granted by Queen Elizabeth) didn't change how she does her laundry or cleans up after her dog.

The recommended daily allowance

Birds of Illinois

(Sheryl Devore, Steven D. Bailey, Gregory Kennedy)

A beautiful and easy-to-use guide.

From the (e)mail bag

In response to this entry, W.C. writes:

I'm a semi-regular reader and constant fan of your blog -- I read only irregularly because of my own time constraints. I am a constant but envious fan because of your writing. Even when I disagree with you (which is rare) I wish I could say it like you can.

But this time I really, really disagree, and I'm a little disappointed. You say about Hirshman's book: "I included this passage because I rather like that she unmasked 'who do you think you are' as, essentially, a stupid response."

Since that is, basically, my first response to what I've read of her, naturally that causes me to wince a bit, and I'm wondering if you could elaborate?

Or not, as I can tell you have your own time constraints. I also realize it's more than a little impudent of me to read and enjoy your posts for months without ever expressing appreciation to you, and then to write a complaint. So instead of asking for clarification, I'll offer some and you respond, or not, as seems good to you.

My husband is retired military and we had already been married one year before he enlisted. During the course of that twenty-year military career, I was confronted many times by many unauthorized people demanding information or compliance of some sort. When I did not believe they were entitled to the information or behavior they demanded (my husband was military, not me), I often responded with what is the equivalent of "Who do you think you are?" In military speak that would take the form of asking for the name, rank, supervisor's name, and/or regulation number entitling that person to make those demands on me. I do not believe it was stupid or illegitimate. On the contrary, it was to the point and settled the discussion immediately in most cases. There are contexts where "who do you think you are" may be stupid (say, if my neighbor asks me to stop blocking her mailbox, if that's the sort of neighbor I was), but in any situation where one person sets herself up as some sort of authority figure over another, a judge and jury, or an arbiter of some sort, I think it's a legitimate and even the only legitimate response.

This is one of those cases that I think must be divorced from its context to write off "who do you think you are" as a stupid response. The context that prompted that response from me can be found in this ABC article: "Hirshman says working is also a matter of feeling fulfilled. She doesn't buy into the arguments of many homemakers who say taking care of the family is the most fulfilling thing they could imagine. 'I would like to see a description of their daily lives that substantiates that position,' Hirshman said."

But I do feel fulfilled in what I do, and Hirshman does not get to decide what substantiates how I feel. That she insists that I would have to present to her a description of my daily life that meets her standards in order to "substantiate" my position to her satisfaction does, indeed, warrant a responsive demand that she first prove to me she has any standing or authority that I should recognize. "Who do you think you are?" is but another way of saying, "No, you don't get to see a description of my daily life that substantiates my position, because you have no authority to determine what does and does not make me feel fulfilled."

It would be as though I told you that you really don't enjoy "Jeeves and Wooster" (as do we) or Sandies fudge drop cookies, and before I will accept your word for it that you do or that "Jeeves and Wooster" DVDs are a worthwhile use of your time, you must first substantiate your position and level of pleasure in those things to my satisfaction. Were I to be so unreasonable, I would merit no better response than silence or the rhetorical question, "Who do you think you are?"

I'm sorry that you think it is stupid. Perhaps it is. I still think it is as legitimate a response as Hirshman's comment deserved.

____________

W.C.'s is a well reasoned defense of the "who do you think you are" response. One explanation I can offer for being so pleased with Hirshman's assessment of "who do you think you are" as a kneejerk, illogical, and, yes, stupid retort to another's challenge is that I've seen it employed far less skillfully (damned stupidly, truth be told) than W.C. has.

Picture a redfaced, spluttering, indignant "Who do you think you are, missy!?" rejoinder to a carefully articulated position, say, in a school board meeting or at an editorial review or a post mortem on monthly publication -- gatherings of (allegedly) educated, similarly situated, thinking people. Can you see the speaker? Can you feel the frustration? Ergh.

There is nothing appropriate, smart, or acceptable about the way "who do you think you are" has been uttered in my recent memory, so I divorced that passage from the rest of Hirshman's uneven and, in the final analysis, ill advised "manifesto," celebrating her assertion less for what it lent to her argument and more because it reminded me of something else entirely (i.e., the glee I found in someone else thinking that "who do think you are" can be a stupid reply).

Pressed, I'd say that I have heard the "who do you think you are" reply used shabbily, unthinkingly, stupidly so many times that I had altogether forgotten that it can be used with clarity, authority, and meaning -- as W.C. uses it.

Thanks for making me (re)think, W.C.

The recommended daily allowance

Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Second Season

Bertie: You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underclothing.
Jeeves: No, sir.
Bertie: One or the other. Not both.
Jeeves: Precisely, sir.

I recommended the first season here.

And while I'm on the subject of recommendations, pick up a few of these to enhance your viewing pleasure.

As I said yesterday, Oh. My. God.

Fine Art Friday

Note: Quiet Life and Seasonal Soundings first set me on the idea of a "Fine Art Friday" entry. A post in another forum inspired the material here.

Several years ago, I took a series of courses at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The lecturers assumed nothing about us -- the adult students in the classes, mostly educators -- but a "burning desire to know more." This approach worked well for an art infant like me.

Oh, what a lot I learned. One bit that I remember in particular concerns Jackson Pollack's work, "Greyed Rainbow." When we were ushered into the room in which the painting hung, the speaker explained that it had been her experience that people who had not been exposed to much (any) non-representational art when they were younger were unlikely to appreciate such work as "Greyed Rainbow."

"They will dismiss it as childish, pointless, and all that is wrong with modern art."

Many in our class nodded their agreement.

She then went on to discuss the differences between representational art (which presents objects that occur in the "real world," images most of us can readily identify) and non-representational art (abstract).

By the time we turned our eyes on the Pollack, our lecturer had introduced us to some of its context and language, including the idea that "Greyed Rainbow" had been painted on a horizontal rather than a vertical surface. I had seen the work at least three times prior to the series, yet I had never noticed the lower third of the painting, in which a rainbow does indeed lurk behind a seeming storm of black and gray.

If pressed at that moment, I would have described the painting as the tail-end of a period of depression. My reaction at this fourth encounter was visceral: It looked like something felt. Van Gogh's "The Bedroom" and Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," on the other hand -- both of which I adore, prints of which hang in my home -- most certainly do not.

Amazing.

What an absolutely remarkable experience -- to see something where once I saw, well, practically nothing.

The series of courses and this lecturer in particular sought not to disparage but to inform -- no snobbery or art-freakism; just an appeal to our learning selves. I encountered her during a break later in the series and reminded her of her observation about many folks' "failure" to "get" non-representational art. "I wonder if that would apply to experimental literature and atonal music and--." Before I could finish, she interrupted in a breathless rush, "Yes! Yes, of course! Of course, it could!"

A wonderful, meandering discussion followed, the kind I love best, the kind that makes. me. think.

Someone shook me from my comfortable roost, and I saw something new.

Cool, huh?

The recommended daily allowance

Oh. My. God.

On the nightstand

Under the pillow. In the knapsack or, more recently, the messenger bag. On the shelf behind the cat. Atop the toilet tank. Under the front seat in the mini-van. And so on. This is the thirty-third "On the nightstand" entry.

Read. Think. Learn.

And remember:

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

~ Francis Bacon

:: Parnassus on Wheels (Christopher Morley; yes, again)

I wonder if there isn't a lot of bunkum in higher education? I never found that people who were learned in logarithms and other kinds of poetry were any quicker in washing the dishes or darning socks. I've done a good deal of reading when I could, and I don't want to "admit impediments" to the love of books, but I've also seen lots of good, practical folk spoiled by too much fine print. Reading sonnets always gives me hiccups, too.

:: To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifetime Obsession (Dan Koeppel)

Speciation is evolution. Evolution is at the heart of who we are, what life is on this planet. I hope that this book shows how the pursuit of birds relates to -- and grows from -- science's quest to explain our existence. I hope it shows what that science means to those of us who are content to simply watch at our backyard feeders. And I hope it shows why birds -- especially birds -- can lead to these understandings; the same reason Darwin chose finches to illustrate his theories -- birds are active, colorful, and musical, all easy-to-differentiate evolutionary traits -- are the reasons for the more general romantic love of birds. It shouldn't be a surprise that humans are fascinated by creatures that soar, sing, nest, and battle.

:: The Thurber Carnival (James Thurber)

The mistaken exits and entrances of my thirties have moved me several times to some thought of spending the rest of my days wandering aimlessly around the South Seas, like a character out of Conrad, silent and inscrutable. But the necessity for frequent visits to my oculist and dentist has prevented this... Nobody from Columbus [Ohio] has ever made a first rate wanderer in the Conradean tradition. Some of them have been fairly good at disappearing for a few days to turn up in a hotel in Louisville with a bad headache and recollection of they got there.

:: The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods (A. G. Sertillanges)

To start precipitately on a road which one could not tread with a firm step would be merely to prepare the way for disillusionment. Everyone has the duty to work; and after a first early and toilsome training no one acts wisely if he lets his mind fall gradually back into its primitive ignorance....

:: Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival (Velma Wallis)

Then, in a loud, clear voice he made a sudden announcement: "The council and I have arrived at a decision." The chief paused as if to find the strength to voice his next words. "We are going to have to leave the old ones behind."

:: The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life (Amy Tan)

I hear this type of ethnic authority invoked more often these days. It's as though a new and more insidious form of censorship has crept into the fold, winning followers by wearing the cloak of good intentions and ethnic correctness. The leaders of the cause point to the negative and tiresome stereotypes mindlessly reproduced in textbooks over the years. Why are Chinese people in American history books portrayed only as faceless railroad workers? Why should we read Hemingway when the evidence shows he was a misogynist and an anti-Semite?

:: Polio: An American Story (David M. Oshinsky)

No disease drew as much attention, or struck the same terror, as polio. And for good reason. Polio hit without warning. There was no way of telling who would get it and who would be spared. It killed some of its victims and marked others for life, leaving behind vivid reminders for all to see: wheelchairs, crutches, leg braces, breathing devices, deformed limbs. In truth, polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed in the media, not even at its height in the 1940s and 1950s. Ten times as many children would be killed in accidents in these years, and three times as many would die of cancer.

:: The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure (Hans Magnus Enzensberger)

Robert no longer jumped out of his skin each time the number devil lost his temper. By now he knew that whenever it happened there was something interesting coming up, something the number devil couldn't easily explain. But the chain was flapping dangerously close to Robert's head and had wound so tightly around the number devil that much of him had receded from view.

:: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain; yes, again -- this time on CD)

:: Visit the "On the nightstand" archive. ::

The recommended daily allowance

The True Story of Stellina (Matteo Pericoli)

Share this beautifully simple story with the tender-hearted birdwatcher in your life.

This woman's work

If you're late to this party, you may want to stop here, here, and here first.

Added later: See A.S.'s reply appended to this entry.

Added still later: The incomparable R.T.'s commentary is now appended to this entry.

From Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World (Linda R. Hirshman):

p. 30

If women take a lesson, they will learn that using their capacities for speech and reason, engaging in political life with other adults, having social and economic independence, and giving more to the society than they take cannot be reduced to a "pile of pay stubs." Never met someone dying who wished they'd [sic] had more time at work? Eleanor Roosevelt, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Jane Austen, Elizabeth I, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Howell Raines, Franz Schubert, Martin Luther King, Jr., Karl Rove, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton, John XXIII, your candidate here.

As I noted here, Hirshman isn't talking to me in her manifesto. She's not talking to librarians and nurses and pharmacists and teachers and police officers and answering service operators and bank clerks and by-the-word writers and freelance editors (even if we are educated and/or smart). No, Hirshman is aiming her arrows right over our heads at lawyers-on-the-cusp-of-partnership, financial officers, deans-in-the-making, movers, shakers... the women she perceives have the best chance of becoming political, marketplace, and academic leaders.

Acknowledging that, however, won't prevent me from replying, and I say, she's got a point. If I were to realize that I'm running out of time fast, the desire for more time to finish this, write that, pursue the other -- in other words, more time to work, to learn, to love, to live -- would certainly be awakened in me.

In you, too, right?

p. 31

In many circles "who do you think you are" is regarded as a knock-down argument, protecting the speaker from ever examining their [sic] life. There is an easy answer to how I can suggest better lives. Like Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further... it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants."

Hirshman goes on to describe the philosophical underpinnings of her strategic plan to get to work (which includes such exhortations as "Don't study art," "Take work seriously," and "Consider a reproductive strike"). I included this passage because I rather like that she unmasked "who do you think you are" as, essentially, a stupid response.

p. 34

Assuming she is telling the truth, and she does live in the perfect land of a Walgreen's ad, is not all this biking and tree climbing a bit too much of the inner child for any normal adult? Although child rearing, unlike housework, is important and can be difficult, it does not take well-developed political skills to rule over creatures smaller than you are, weaker than you are, and completely dependent on you for survival or thriving. Certainly, it's not using your reason to do repetitive, physical tasks, whether it's cleaning or driving the car pool. My correspondent's life does have a certain Tom Sawyerish quality to it, but she has no power in the world. Why would the congressmen she writes to listen to someone whose life so resembles that of a toddler's, Harvard degree or no?

And it was here, finally, that Hirshman lost me. She concedes that children are completely dependent on their mothers for survival or thriving, but she's rushing us off to traditional work environments and positing that we're worth little if we don't earn a lot and achieve more. Make up your mind, dear philosopher.

I found myself so impatient by the time I reached this thinly veiled attack ("Assuming she is telling the truth," indeed), I wanted to apologize to the librarians who ordered this book on my recommendation. (And Hirshman thinks folks like me have no influence. Heh, heh, heh.)

Don't you wonder what Hirshman's correspondent made of the philosopher's take on her idyllic life?

p. 38

Both my interviews and the public debate reflect that women who drop out of the public world demonstrate a singular indifference to the larger society. Maybe it was the intense pressure to create an unheard-of utopia for their children and within the four walls of the single-family dwelling, but when the Times brides did do some volunteer work, it was always almost always at their children's schools or at churches, where they could look after their children's treatment by making themselves valuable to the school personnel. Several left the schools when their children were finished and followed them to the next school. Again, the social good is concentrated only in a narrow, familial world.

Where do I begin? Hmmm, perhaps with the assertion that I can't change the world, but I can work hard to improve my corner? Or the position that I'm not parenting society, just the three humans here in the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie? Hirshman doesn't seem to hold the idea that one can leave the world a bit better by a healthy (and happy and well-educated) child (or two or three) in much regard, does she?
________________

I read all ninety-two pages, Ms. Hirshman.

And then my life went on, pretty much as it did before your manifesto grabbed headlines.

I work and I play. I read and I dance. I study Spanish and I watch birds. I sing and, yeah, I dust and I drive the kids to their destinations. I teach and I grow. I sleep in some mornings and I request books from the library and better service from the local government. I, as you say, rule over creatures smaller than I am, weaker than I am, and completely dependent on me for survival or thriving -- and I do it well.

And I do most of that in overalls.

My life does have a certain Tom Sawyerish quality to it, but I have all the power in the world I need and want.

You made me think, Ms. Hirshman, but you didn't change the landscape of my imagination.
________________

A. responded to this post today. She writes:

I have been reading your blogs about Hirshman, and I think I've also read most of your links about it. I spent an enjoyable evening discussing these issues with my husband, and thought I'd dare to share some of our thoughts.

Here's where I agree with her -- the next battle for women's equality will be about housework. Nearly all of my women friends, whether they work for pay or not, feel responsible for keeping the home running. Husbands may "help" when asked, but women feel responsible. It's the same idea as when you hear parents talking about a dad "babysitting' his own children. I couldn't live like that, and I do believe that women will never reach their full level of power and influence until this changes.

Unfortunately, Hirshman's solution creates two distinct classes of women: those who are working in powerful jobs, exerting influence, and those who are working to look after the children of women who are exerting influence. And while I agree with you that she's not talking to librarians and teachers when exhorting women to get back to work, I also don't think she's talking to the NYTimes brides when she makes the feminist argument about housework. It seems somewhat manipulative to argue the feminist cause, and at the same time be willing to sacrifice a whole segment of female society to a life of meaningless, repetitive, drudgery where they make no contribution to society.

Thanks for making me (us) think.

________________

R.T. writes:

I thought I could ignore the Hirshman polemic, but it is just too uninformed for me to resist any longer.

This passage, that begins "Assuming she is telling the truth," had me jumping out of my chair. That Ms. Hirshman does not have any inkling of the real skills required to effectively and purposefully raise children is made clear in this statement, "...it does not take well-developed political skills to rule over creatures smaller than you are, weaker than you are, and completely dependent on you for survival or thriving." No? Obviously, she either had none of these skills or didn't choose to use them while raising her own, so she assumes that others are equally devoid of the ability. But the reality is, effective, loving, and interested parents will acquire these skills if they don't already have them, both political as well as psychological, because it will lead to greater understanding and promotion of the growth and development of their own children, to harmony within the family, and ultimately to people (both adults and children) ready to meet the challenges outside the home.

In other words, while she may see children as merely small and weak, she has obviously missed their supreme intellectual powers (as good as any adult's, sometimes better), their ability to negotiate astutely as they get older, their placement in the family on a schedule that allows little to no relief at the negotiation or management table for parents, and their insider's view of their parents' every strength and weakness that ultimately makes them a force that continuously challenges. Such people at every age require ongoing research, education, and development on the part of the parents if they are going to create and provide conditions within the home that serve each best. A monumental task!

I have learned more about the art of compromise and negotiation as a full-time parent than in any other area of my life. Along with that, I have learned intimately and thoroughly (and am still learning) more about educational, nutritional, and emotional needs of a diverse (albeit, small) population because the outcome matters to me. In the process, I have had the side benefit of truly recognizing the power of having the right facts, that sometimes there is no "right" or "wrong" but many gray areas, as well as the humility to admit defeat when I am wrong. Would that it were that ALL our political leaders and CEOs and University Presidents had to do a stint, not in the army or even the peace corps, but as chief of their familial corporation for at least ten years before they could get into office. This kind of on-the-ground training would be unmatched by anything provided at any University, Research Center, or Capitol building anywhere in the world.

She asks, "Why would the congressmen she writes to listen to someone whose life so resembles that of a toddler's, Harvard degree or no?" The better question would begin, "Why wouldn't the congressmen." If this congressman (I note the gender identification man here as Hirshman's slip, as our supposed feminist seemed to momentarily forget there are congresswomen) were smart, and lacking in the education acquired by focusing on the raising of one's children himself would turn to the wisdom of mothers and fathers who have been so responsible, he would write better policy. This informed kind of knowledge, learned only in the trenches of the home, would go farther to create greater responsibility in government, more insight into the true needs of the majority of citizens, and the best direction for guiding peace throughout the world, than any of their role models from the corporate or political world or even in history have taught. (And unless you think I overstate my case, tell me where our models have taken us to date. Has war ended? Has poverty ended? Has humanity learned to look out for each other better than in any time in history? Tell me it would hurt to at least look to another model of experience.)

But just in case I am being too hard on Ms. Hirshman's statement, isolated from a book I have not read, I give her this concession. Perhaps she has been too long ensconced in the world of working with adults, of working on her own interests, and too unconsciously absorbing the culture-think that is handed down from one power group to the next over the years. Perhaps this absorption has given her the misguided assumptions on which she bases her premise. But it is these assumptions that she needs to question.

When she stumbles on the truth, she may have something to say. Until then, I've heard enough.

Web

A relative of the spider who created the web above returned to the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie two days ago and created a web to rival the one I first featured in this entry.

As I said last August, one has no choice but to be thankful for children who need nothing more magical than a spider's web (well, is there anything more magical?) to awaken them to the day's possibilities, adventures, and lessons.

Red fox

Photo credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Mr. M-mv called us all to the back glass doors at about 10:15 p.m. last night, and our amazement escaped in breathless gasps and whispered exclamations of delight. We've only seen a red fox in our yard twice since moving here -- the first time was about a year ago, and Mr. M-mv was out of town.

Visit this site for images and information.

Feed your bibliomania!

Newberry Library's 22nd Annual Book Fair

Thursday, July 27, 2006, 12 - 8 p.m.
Friday, July 28, 2006, 12 - 8 p.m.
Saturday, July 29, 2006, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sunday, July 30, 2006, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Browse among more than one hundred thousand donated books sorted into fifty categories for your convenience.

Admission is free. Parking is available at 100 W. Chestnut, 1025 N. Clark, or 100 E. Walton for $6 for up to six hours with Newberry validation.

For information, call (312) 255-3510 and/or visit the Newberry Library site.

Chapbook entry

From Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast (Bill Richardson):

p. 28

The purpose of reading is not necessarily to have one's own world view confirmed or mirrored back. But it is nice when it happens. It is not difficult for either of us to imagine any number of Anne Tyler's confused and gentle characters turning up at our door. We rather suspect that many of our guests see themselves reflected in her pages and take a certain comfort in being validated through fiction. Who can blame them? It is a benign form of narcissism.

Have you read this 2004 BookPage interview with Anne Tyler?

p. 38

Many people have had this experience, I think, especially where music is concerned. We become steeped in the notion that if we can't excel, there's little point in pursuit.

What do you think? Is there little point in pursuing an interest if there's no chance you will excel?

p. 56

I love the phrase "learning by heart," especially when it is applied to poetry, because it seems such a perfect description of the process of memorizing words that have been carefully chosen and weighed and handled. The heart, I think, is the home of all things rhythmic, is where learned poems go to live. Over time and repeated use, they are folded into one's being, are absorbed by the blood, and feed the rest of the mechanism: more subtle than oxygen, but as vital, in their way. Memorized poems become part of the whole, like reflexes. They surface as they're required.

What poems have you "learned by heart"? Some M-mv poetry entries:

Russian lit (3.12.2006)

The recommended daily allowance (4.06.2006)

"The Gift Outright" (1.20.2006)

Czeslaw Milosz (12.02.2005)

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening (11.25.2004)

p. 63

This anthology of stories, fables, and drawings was published in 1945. It is significant for me on two fronts. It was one of the books sent to us by our father; and it was one of those transitional books that bridge the gap between childhood reading and adult reading. I felt terribly knowing and chuckled appreciatively at the cartoons, although it's certain I didn't get them at all. They are, after all, quite sexually sophisticated. This is a perfect bedside book, and a great reminder that there is much virtue to be found in simplicity.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1894, writer and cartoonist James Thurber is widely considered the greatest American humorist since Mark Twain. According to Books and Writers, Thurber's work "dealt with the frustrations of modern world." Walter Mitty, his snarling wife, and silently observing animals are among his best known characters. What Thurber have you read? And which books bridged your childhood and adulthood reading?

p. 122

"You subscribe to the Reader's Digest?" asked Rae.

"Mother did," I said, with a faint and unnecessary tone of apology. I don't know why it's so fashionable to sneer at the Reader's Digest. I've learned a great deal from it over the years about the function of the major organs, and how to keep love alive in a marriage. "We've kept up the subscription as a kind of memorial. And anyway, I rather like it. Great toilet-side reading."

Do you subscribe to Reader's Digest?

Pitcher plant

The leaves of the carnivorous pitcher plant hold water -- like cups or, well, pitchers. The glistening water lures insects, which become ensnared by the slippery leaf surfaces and downward-pointing hairs.

It is my favorite plant at the Volo Bog.

Although the jewelweed sure is pretty, no?

Today visitors to the bog celebrated trees. We traveled the "Trail of Twelve Trees," which was not a real trail but an assortment of tagged trees in the picnic area, near the visitor center, and in the Chipmunk Woodlot on the Tamarack View Trail.

Grandmom (Mr. M-mv's mother), who is visiting the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie for the first time, joined us.

And yesterday Grandmom cheered Master to a sixth-place finish in his favorite event -- the 50M freestyle. The field was twenty-eight deep, and he beat his best time. As for the rest of his conference performance, his 100M freestyle performance yielded an eleventh-place finish (in a field of thirty-two competitors). The 15-and-up men's relay teams did well enough, too, but I do not have the times and places at my fingertips, and Master is guarding today, so... we'll leave it at Nice job.

Many thanks to all who sent good thoughts.

Hey, and many thanks to all who shop Amazon.com via our links. We enjoyed a fantastic quarter, thanks to your business and loyalty.

For M-mv merchandise, visit Mental Multivitamin Mall.

Mr. M-mv rose at 5:15 a.m.

to shower and make coffee. Master M-mv rose fifteen minutes later. He ate his breakfast in less than five minutes. They each brushed and rinsed their teeth for the requisite two minutes (brush) and thirty seconds (rinse). Mr. M-mv prepared and packed his son's lunch in less than seven minutes. Master fussed with his hair for three minutes. They each dressed in less than two minutes. As the men in my life, they were bustled out the door early in order to arrive at the field house ten minutes before the bus to the distant conference meet was scheduled to depart.

They sat in companionable silence for most of the wait, although they did consult the Blackberry about weather and reviewed contact information for the long day ahead. The bus pulled in three minutes late. Master lingered with Mr. M-mv; school-bus seating is no friend to a 6'7" frame. Finally, he loped over to waiting bus, which pulled out of the parking lot four minutes late.

Mr. M-mv waved to its retreating form, and Master stuck his arm out the window to return his father's gesture. Each continued shaking his hand long after the other could actually see him.

Mr. M-mv arrived home seven minutes later.

In one hundred and twenty minutes, he will head out to the same distant town. He will drive at least eighty-eight minutes to see four events -- a total of perhaps eight minutes that will punctuate an eight-hour conference in exclamation points.

But unlike a son's events in a season conference meet, most of the content of our lives arrives and departs not in exclamation points but in commas and semicolons and periods -- in the ordinary, in the morning rituals, in two- or five- or fifteen-minute intervals.

Mark the softer punctuation. Mark it well because enfolded in the swish of the sponge on the breakfast dishes and the sound of the crows discovering the meatballs you set out, in the companionable silences and soft murmurs the quotidian comprises, in the commas and semicolons and periods is, well, life.

So life isn't the time he made in the 50M freestyle or the trophy he will bring home. It isn't the raise his father received or the art contest his sister won. Life isn't birthdays and vacations and a deafening line of exclamation points. No, mostly life is the drive to the field house and the lonely practices and the hard but good work and the family book club and the drawing pencils scattered about the living room and all of the small moments that beget the exclamation points.

Don't miss it.

Six thousand words

Six thousand finished words, that is -- a critical distinction.

See you on the other side.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.
--Russell Baker

From the (e)mail bag

K., who blogs at Girl Detective, recently wrote:

I have also been cleaning/sorting/wanting to purge. I am trying to be at peace with the fact that I can't get the tub and shower blindingly white in spite of having resorted to toxic chemicals. It is times like this that make me believe that there is something to astrology, since Mercury is in retrograde and that is supposed to be a good time for introspection, housecleaning both metaphorical and literal, and re-reading. Or perhaps we are just creatures of biology, in tune with the earth, and we are weeding our metaphorical gardens in anticipation of the fall harvest, now that summer solstice is past.

Even before your post, I was wondering what Ikea bookshelves you recommend, and if you shelve MMPBs with your TPBs and HCs (I bet I don't need to spell out, right?) since I sense a need for new shelves, coming sharpish.

Your Shakespearean interchange reminded me of the book I'm reading now, Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. Uneven, but with lots of Shakespeare, though I can't recommend or not till the end, which I hope will be tonight, finally, since it's overlong at almost 500 pages.

Also, I've long thought of writing you about another aspect of/insight to parenting as performance art, that your post made me think of, though I doubt it was your intent. It is that on the difficult days, of which there have been many of late, I try to get out of the house, and into the public, because I am so much less likely to say out loud (or at least, less loudly) the awful, angry things in my head, and I am compelled to be less physically abrupt than I might be in the privacy of my home. The public setting, with its automatic performance aspect of parenting, helps give me some added conscience and space, on days that sleep deprivation and screaming have eroded them. So the annoying performing mamas, of which I know I am often one, may be showing off and posturing out a lack of esteem, or may be (to put it bluntly) just trying not to lose their shit.

Finally, thanks for the link and comment in your recap of Hirshman [here, here, and here]. My current thought on the mommy wars is that there seem to be so many choices now, and perhaps it is these that make us so contentious, because we have to defend our choices, both to ourselves and others. My doctor and my dad were giving me a hard time about feeding my baby too often. I cut back, and we all suffered through a week of reflux till I went back to feeding him more often. A friend writes to me of baby sleep troubles, because her other friends are overly Ferber-ish. All the choices--breastfeeding, circumcision, how to school, how to sleep, how to discipline, etc.--are so fraught and potentially value-loaded that it's hard not to judge someone else who didn't make the same decision as me, since I spent much thought, time, research and agony over mine. I know the answers are simple--live and let live; to each her own--but they're still never easy.

Regarding the IKEA shelves: No question, the prettiest ones we've purchased are the Leksvik. Solid wood, they are also sturdy. And I think that at $99 a case, they're a solid deal.

The Billy system is popular, cheap, and sturdy, but it's not wood.

And, over the last year, we lined the bird room with Flärke bookcases. I don't see a link for them on IKEA's site, but they're $19.99. That's not a typo. Ours are lined with books -- no sagging.

As for filing, I do shelve MMPBs with the TPBs and HCs.

Thank you for the note, K. You always make me think.

The incomparable R.T. sent a note and link last week:

An article from a favorite non-fiction author, one you like, too, I believe--Daniel Pink, on the economist Daniel Galenson and his research on creative genius. I found this interesting and inspiring.

I don't claim genius, but I have always felt that good, maybe even great work, is within our grasp at any age. And as I have said before, I always like articles that back up what I think I already know!

Thank you, R.T. From "What Kind of Genius Are You?":

What he has found is that genius – whether in art or architecture or even business – is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

Thanks to all who take the time to send book and article recommendations, musings on recent posts, and notes of kind praise and encouragement.

Read. Think. Learn.

A bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils

I first posted this photo and entry about a year ago, but we collected the items on our "Need for Grandmom's Visit" list from Target over the weekend, and, lo! The back-to-school aisles have already replaced the garden tools and outdoor furniture.

I love the smell of a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils, the feel of a virgin notebook, and the sound of a new three-ring binder snapping shut.

I also love 25-cent boxes of Crayola crayons, 99-cent packages of 250 (or, sometimes, 500!) sheets of colored paper, and 10-cent folders, composition pads, and college-ruled paper.

I love glue sticks, ten for a dollar; rulers, 15 cents apiece.

I love the promise of an unopened stack of index cards and the excitement of a new academic calendar.

I do not go in search of back-to-school sales, and I don't like to shop. But when I find myself in Jewel or Target or even (*GASP*) Wal*Mart in the months of July and August, I will slip these items into my cart with my regular purchases and remember that without the care and inspiration of a few wonderful public school teachers, I would be a small, sad human being.

New points on crayons, unblemished pads, fragrant pencil blossoms -- these remind me of teachers I loved and those who loved me back.

Nighthawks

Today Quiet Life continues with her "Fine Art Friday" and "Friday Five" features. Usually, I respond in her comments, but when I saw her selection, Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," I decided to pick up the idea here.

As I wrote here, the Seurat is one of my favorite paintings. From that entry:

An Art Institute of Chicago print of Seurat's "La Grande Jatte" dominates one wall of our living room; Martorell's "Saint George Killing the Dragon" and Hopper's "Nighthawks" each earned its own wall, too. I sometimes imagine these paintings eyeing each other with the same unease that, say, our volumes of Jane Austen must eye the volumes of Margaret Atwood. "What are you doing here?" one will hiss to the other.

Yes. The product of an overcaffeinated brain. I know.

The print has been a prominent feature of the geography of our imaginations for so long that I think we secretly suspected that there was nothing more to know of its mysteries. And then we visited the Art Institute's latest special exhibit — "Seurat and the Making of 'La Grande Jatte'" — and realized how wrong we were.

In the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie, Saint George now dominates the living room / library, while Seurat's work and Hopper's brooding, noirish image complement each other in the master bedroom.

So seemingly different, even opposite, the Seurat and the Hopper actually share the same characteristics that another pair of opposites, dawn and dusk, do: Each artfully hides secrets, some of them menacing; each boldly plays with our expectations of light and dark; each inspires narrative. Yes, the attentive viewer will be absorbed by these paintings, such that he or she will begin to perceive both the differences and the similarities in their stories.

Other prints from the AIC hang in the halls and the bird room. Maybe in Fridays future, I'll be inspired by Donna to discuss them. And now to her "Friday Five."

Appetizer: Name one thing nice that you could do for someone else today.
Hmmmm.

Soup: When was the last time you were frightened by the weather?
Two weeks ago, in the wee small hours of the morn', we experienced the worst thunder I can remember. It rocked the house like an earthquake.

Salad: What would you say is the most useful web site or blog that you visit?
Is Google a site? Far and away, it is the most useful tool I employ in my 'net travels, whether for work or personal interest and / or need.

Main Course: Who was your favorite singer/group when you were a child?
Child? As in, before thirteen? Barry Manilow.

Dessert: Did you miss me?
Of course, dear Donna.

It began on Monday with a window.

The front window in my bedroom, to be precise. It was grimy. I don't know when it made the transition from just fine to ewww, but on Monday I knew with certainty that I must clean it. Right. Now. The tall, tall man-boy offered his assistance. Voila! Cleaner than new, inside and out. He did the side window, too. Of course, all of that unfiltered summer sun only served to illuminate the tidy but numerous stacks of books here, there. Time to sort and shelve. Ah, to shelve, we must shift. Well, while we're shifting, we may as well dust the book-tops—it's been a while since we've done that. Shifting and dusting led to a bit of discriminate purging which yielded a tidy stack for the used bookstore or library sale. Hey, speaking of tidy piles... let's sort through the shoes and clothes for donation items.

What about those old dishes and glasses? Shall we pack them to donate, too? Sure, only that meant that I needed to reorganize the kitchen shelves, and since I spent so much time in the kitchen, I was bound to realize that I've never been quite satisfied with the way the tiny pantry area turned out. What if I painted the shelves and reorganized? Oh, I'd like that much better! But, nice as that project was, it did require moving everything on those shelves to the dining room table, and moving the items back from the table to the newly painted pantry... yes, I noticed that it was time to give the chairs a little more attention than their daily once-over. 'might as well do the table while I'm on it. Hey, do I need all of the dining linens in this hutch? Why not add these never-used table napkins and clothes to the donation piles?

All of that cleaning and purging meant an extra shower (or two). Lazily lathering, I couldn't help but notice that the shower curtains could be replaced, as could the floor mats, which, while clean, are simply sort of blah. Reaching for the new shower curtains, I then perceived that, since I'm preparing all of these piles for donation and since I've gone through most of my rag bag, now would be as good a time as any to pitch the blah towels, washclothes, too, and, by golly, even those thin sheets that always end up on the bottom because who wants the thin ones on his or her bed?

It goes without saying that if I were to clean the linen closet, I must then clean out the other bathroom storage, pitching and ditching shampoos that didn't live up to their claims, body lotion that smelled better in the aisle of Target than on my elbows and knees, and, um, what is that? So I did. And when I was done purging and scouring, I needed another shower.

But instead, I began carting the piles and bags of donations to the car. En route, I thought for the four-hundred-and-sixty-seventh time since we moved to the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie, If only I had one of those hedge trimmers... while images from Edward Scissorhands flashed on the projection screen in my head.

The four-hundred-and-sixty-seventh time must have been a charm because twenty minutes later I was at Ace, hip-deep in earnest conversation with a teen just emerging from the worst part of his bout with acne. He seemed quite convinced that this hedge trimmer would suit my needs precisely.

But it's drizzling today, so my adventures in topiary planning must wait. Natch, plenty to keep me busy inside. Plants to shift and repot, linens to wash, and so on.
_______________________________________

As I've written many times before, the daily dance of chores and laundry and home-maintenance and -making (Norris's "quotidian liturgy") bothers me not. a. jot. I just do the next thing; clean and tidy as I go. But any home can benefit from periodic "spa treatment": a cleansing scrub, a beautifying mask, a deep massage, a new outfit or two.

Ahhhh.

Over the years, I've learned not to attempt to "schedule" these treatments; once every six months or so, something just clicks, and it begins, maybe with a window or a less-than-fresh quilt or an untidy drawer. Then, no big deal, keep on moving, almost done, this isn't so bad, and, finally, this. looks. awesome.

Here was my epiphany during this recent (and nearly complete) spa treatment on our home: Hey, this place looks so damned awesome! You know what? We should have Mom out—right now!

You see, in response to a recent invitation, my mother-in-law had recently sent us some dates; the earliest were for next week.

So, guess who's coming to dinner next Friday night?

And by then? I will have fired up my new hedge trimmer. Mom won't notice that our CD collection is alphabetized (by section) or that the tub grippers are blindingly white, but she will just love the zoo of animals I carve out of those bushes out front!

Heh, heh, heh.

By the way, it began on Monday with a window. It will end tomorrow with me sleeping in. The birds' songs will rouse me, and the first thing I see will be through a squeaky clean window.

From the archives: Testament

More than twenty years ago, my college mentor recommended Testament in one or another of the several classes and seminars I took with him. When I was home a couple of weekends later, my mother channel-surfed in lieu of conversation, and William Devane's face flickered across the screen. "Can we watch this for a bit?"

It wasn't a long movie, over in a quiet horror and a sob.

I remember it now as my first genuine glimpse into the lives of adults, of families. (And this is, of course, the gift of good books, films, artworks, music, etc. -- that they help us understand what is real and true in ways in which what is real and true has not yet done, perhaps cannot do.)

The film, which was brilliantly casted with gifted actors (Jane Alexander, Devane, the young Luke Haas) who actually look like a typical nuclear family in a California hamlet, opens twenty-four hours before a nuclear attack. In Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Emily cries out in Act III, "I can't. I can't go on. It goes too fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed." This is, of course, the essence of Testament's extended first act: that the father challenges the son to make the hill but pedals ahead, that the youngest would prefer to be a rat in the school production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (a wish denied that serves as heartbreaking foreshadow), that the mother fails to awaken in time to exercise, that the husband and wife make love rather than continue a painful discussion, and so on. Piano practice. Breakfast. Clutter. School. Work. Answering machines. Unfinished projects. Unspoken fears. Unmet expectations. Pain and beauty, the extraordinary and the commonplace. Life. And no one really notices. The rhythms and grace notes that underscore everyday life grow too subtle, pass unmarked, end uncelebrated.

And then the world winks out, a few lights at a time. We can wish that we remember everything, and how we survived, the mother tells her son as the movie concludes.

But is being the last woman standing on the cusp of the end of the world something a girl dreams of when she grows up?

Watching Testament two decades later, sharing it with my oldest child, a perceptive and sensitive filmgoer, I was challenged -- again -- to examine the course and content of my life. If it were all over tomorrow, would today have been enough?
___________________________

I had hoped to acquire a copy of the short story on which the film is based, "The Last Testament" by Carol Amen. Today I stumbled upon this posting to a message board:

Looking to buy the April 1987 edition of Ellery Queen, Vol 89, #4, No 529; Ed. Eleanor Sullivan.

This issue should contain the story "Last Testament" by Carol Amen starting on pg 86.

If single issues aren't available or you don't want to break up the entire year's issues, let me know, I'd be willing to buy the whole year's worth if need be. I'd really just like a readable copy of that story- it was the basis of the 1983 American Playhouse movie "Testament" about post-nuclear war affecting a single family in California. The original story apparently was published in 1980 in the St Anthony Messenger, a small Catholic monthly... but I'm unable to find a copy of that magazine. The author, Carol Amen is deceased (1987) and I've not been able to locate any assigned agents for her work.

Perhaps the librarians can help me.
___________________________

I couldn't sleep last night, so I brewed some more coffee and padded through the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. I think that I began to understand why so many people choose to slip-slide through life. Literature or art or music or conversation that makes. us. think. hurts. It forces us to re-examine ourselves and our lives in ways that may... that will disappoint us. Reconciling who we are with who we thought we might be is hard work. It is easier, then, to watch "The Apprentice," post silly polls to faceless "friends" on a chat board, hide in the bathroom with the latest issue of People, live behind the unexamined rules of an organization, work without joy, sleep without really dreaming. Yes, it is easier to slip-slide on a sled of such soul-deadening (non)choices, easier to slip and slide toward nothingingness than to choose to walk to the very edge of its chasm, to feel its black fingers caress the essence of you, and then to pull away, renewed, recommitted to making today matter more than yesterday.
___________________________

Have you read Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Last Night of the World"?

"We haven't been too bad, have we?"

"No, nor enormously good. I suppose that's the trouble -- we haven't been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was being lots of quite awful things."

Bradbury misstepped there, I think. I reread the story last night in the wake of Testament and decided that he misstepped. While we must be something more than not too bad, I'm not certain that being ourselves is such an unworthy goal. Being our best selves, that is, and by doing so inspiring in those we love and those we meet the desire to be, in turn, their best selves. So that even if a big part of the world is being lots of quite awful things, we are not allowing the everyday to pass unnoticed and uncelebrated.

Testament (1983)

The recommended daily allowance

Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete First Season

I was sent by the agency, sir.
I was given to understand that you require a valet.

Raptor days

Today raptor rehabilitator Bill Early visited Moraine Hills State Park with his red-tailed hawk and great horned owl, both of which were "imprinted" with humans (as opposed to another red-tailed hawk and great horned owl, respectively). His informal presentation -- the highlights of which were appearances by the magnificent birds -- included information about area falcons and owls, raptor ecology, and wildlife rehabilitation.

The material was fascinating, but what was particularly refreshing about this presentation was Early's candor about the nature of his relationship to the birds: They want to hunt and mate, he maintained. They don't "care" about me. They don't "like" me. They put up with me because I feed them. The end. I love that sort of clearsighted candor. Enough with the romaticism about man's relationship to animals, eh?

Early will return to Moraine Hills for a similar program on August 5, 1 to 3 p.m. No reservations are required, but I encourage you to arrive well before 1 p.m.: The room grew crowded quickly. You'll want to take a seat down front, too, especially if you plan to bring children.

About the park: The forty-eight-acre lake at the center of Moraine Hills State Park formed when a large piece of ice broke away from the main glacier (Wisconsonian glaciation period) and melted. The name of the park refers to the geologic formation moraine, which is the boulders, stones, and debris from a glacier. See this entry for our photos of this wonderful resource.

Transcript

"Churlish knaves."

"What did you just call us?"

"Moooom!"

"Man-boy, stop hurling Shakespearean insults at your sisters."

"Oh, foul dissembler."

"Sir!"

"Just kidding."

Laughter, long and loud.

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

More about Thomas here. M-mv on the Welsh poet here.

In praise of video games

From "The Brain Workout" by Brian C. Anderson (Wall Street Journal; June 2, 2006):

The truth is, critics are often ignorant of the moral universe of video games--violent games included. Yes, the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series, in which the gamer plays a criminal on the make in the big city, is pretty amoral. But most violent games put the player in a familiar hero's role, notes Judge Richard Posner in a 2001 Seventh Circuit appeals-court decision overturning an Indianapolis anti-video-game ordinance. "Self-defense, protection of others, dread of the 'undead,' fighting against overwhelming odds--these are the age-old themes of literature, and ones particularly appealing to the young," Mr. Posner observes.

(Note: This piece was reprinted in the June 25, 2006 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times -- where I first read it.)

Related: Everything Bad Is Good for You (Steven Johnson).

Most video games differ from traditional games like chess or Monopoly in the way they withhold information about the underlying rules of the system. When you play chess at anything beyond the beginner's level, the rules of the game contain no ambiguity: you know exactly the moves allowed for each piece, the procedures that allow one piece to capture another. The question that confronts you sitting at the chessboard is not: What are the rules here? The question is: What kind of strategy can I concoct that will best exploit those rules to my advantage?

In the video game world, on the other hand, the rules are rarely established in their entirety before you sit down to play. You're given a few basic instructions about how to manipulate objects or characters on the screen, and a sense of some kind of immediate objective. But many of the rules -- the identity of your ultimate goal and the techniques for reaching that goal -- become apparent only through exploring the world. You literally learn by playing.

As I wrote in this entry, while the book certainly made me think, I couldn't help but wonder if Johnson weren't guilty of a sort of reverse intellectual snobbery. Still, another one for pool- or beachside.

Read. Think. Learn.

Decide.

The recommended daily allowance

Blink

The recommended daily allowance

Syriana

Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale, thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole, make a name for himself, maybe get elected some two-bit congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here. No, I tell you. No, sir. Corruption charges! Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win.

Check out Ebert's review here. (And send the writer good thoughts today.)

I think "Syriana" is a great film. [So do I. Don't miss this one.] I am unable to make my reasons clear without resorting to meaningless generalizations. Individual scenes have fierce focus and power, but the film's overall drift stands apart from them. It seems to imply that these sorts of scenes occur, and always have and always will. The movie explains the politics of oil by telling us to stop seeking an explanation. Just look at the behavior. In the short run, you can see who wants oil and how they're trying to get it. In the long run, we're out of oil.

Independence Day

Image from Free-Stock-Photos.com.

FYI: Discovery is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral at 2:37 p.m. ET -- the first time a shuttle has taken off on the Fourth of July.

About four hundred miles roundtrip

This, this: no more, you gods! your present kindness
Makes my past miseries sports: you shall do well,
That on the touching of her lips I may
Melt and no more be seen. O, come, be buried
A second time within these arms.

It was worth it.

Read. Think. Learn.

That's the key to education, I've always felt: not the contents of the mind, but the ambience of the space in which those contents are recognized and welcomed, elaborated and set to work.

-- James Mustich, Jr.